Preaching  felMewAge 

*^  Albert  J.  Lyman  ^=*^ 


P^S^ 


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*     NOV  2H  1902   *: 

A    _^^ ^. 


BV  4211  .L9 

Lyman,  Albert  Josiah,  1845| 

Preaching  in  the  new  age 


PREACHING  IN  THE  NEW  AGE 


Preaching  in  the  New  Age 


An  Art   and   an    Incarnation 


A  Series  of  six  lectures 
delivered  in  the  Hartford 
Theological  Seminary  upon 
the  "  Carew  "   Foundation. 


BYy 


ALBERT  J.   LYMAN,  D.D. 


New  York     Chicago     Toronto 
FLEMING   H.  REVELL  COMPANY 

1902 


Copyright,         1902         by 

FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 
{May) 


INSCRIPTION 

To  the  Students  in  our  Theological  Seminaries 
who,  though  representing  various  Christian  com- 
munions, have,  by  their  common  and  noble  spirit,  made 
these  addresses  possible,  this  little  volume  is  inscribed. 


HylRTFORD  THEOLOGICAL  SEMIUARY. 
March  6,  IQOS. 

In  the  year  iSyj^  Mr.  Joseph  Carew  of  South 
Hadley  Falls ^  Mass.^  gave  the  sum  of  Jive  thousand 
dollars  to  the  Hartford  Theological  Seminary^  for  the 
pwpose  of  establishing  a  Lectureship  which  should 
give  the  Institution  free  scope  to  conduct  discussions  of 
theological  and  related  themes.  In  the  year  i8gg-iQ00 
the  Rev.  Albert  f.  Lyman.,  D.  Z).,  of  Brooklyn.,  de- 
livered a  course  upon  "  Preaching  in  the  New  Age., — • 
An  Art  and  an  Incarnation.^^  This  series  proved  of 
great  significance^  originality  and  value.  The  Trus- 
tees and  the  Faculty  are  glad  to  have  these  vital  subjects 
and  their  lofty  treatment  given  to  the  public  in  a  per- 
manent forin. 

CHESTER  D.  HARTRANFT, 

President. 


FOREWORD 

The  following  six  lectures,  delivered  in  the  Hartford 
Theological  Seminary  in  the  spring  of  1900,  were 
presented  at  the  time  with  no  thought  of  subse- 
quent publication.  They  are  not  so  much  lectures 
as  informal  "talks,"  such  as  one  might  venture  upon 
if  speaking  without  elaboration,  among  personal 
friends.  It  is  solely  in  response  to  the  request  of  the 
students  themselves  to  whom  they  were  addressed, 
backed  by  the  generous  consent  of  the  gentlemen  of  the 
Seminary  Faculty,  that  courage  has  been  gained  to 
offer  them  in  published  form. 

In  compliance  also  with  the  wish  of  the  students, 
the  direct  style  of  address  employed  at  the  outset  has 
been  retained  upon  these  pages.  The  lectures  (if  one 
must  have  the  hardihood  to  call  them  such)  are  re- 
produced with  no  material  change,  save  in  the 
omission  of  a  few  personal  allusions  and  paragraphs  of 
recapitulation.  They  make,  therefore,  no  pretension 
to  either  the  dignity  or  the  studied  finish  of  the  essay, 
and  are  offered  simply  as  a  student 's  salutation  to  his 
fellow-students  and  to  his  comrades  in  the  great  work 
of  our  common  ministry. 

A.  J.  L. 

Brooklyn,  March  24,  igo2. 


CONTENTS 


CHAP.  PAGE, 

I.     Introductory,       -         ^         -         -  13 

11.     Preaching  an  Art,         _         _         _  ^3 

III.  Preaching  an  Incarnation,    -         -  53 

IV.  The  New  Age  and  its  Relation  to 

Preaching,        -         _         _         _  7^ 

V.     The  Preacher  of  To-Day  Prepar- 
ing His  Sermon,         -         -         -  99 

VI.     The  Preacher  of  To-Day  Before 

His  Congregation,    -         -         --125 


LECTURE  I 
INTRODUCTORY 


LECTURE  I 
INTRODUCTORY 

Our  habit  of  mind  does  not  welcome  prolix  intro- 
duction. But,  surely,  on  the  other  hand,  no  whim 
of  waiving  formality  or  of  saving  time  would  excuse 
the  omission  of  one  simple  word  by  which  I  might 
convey  to  you,  Mr.  President  and  Members  of  the 
Faculty  in  this  institution, — to  you  gentlemen  of  the 
classes,  and  to  you  Christian  ministers  and  friends, 
who  are  present,  my  thanks  for  the  honor  you  give  to 
me  in  the  privilege  of  offering  a  few  observations 
upon  one  department  of  our  common  work. 

I  am  no  expert  in  the  field  of  homiletics.  Nothing 
is  further  from  my  thoughts  than  to  enter  upon  a  gen- 
eral discussion  of  the  theory  and  office  of  the  Chris- 
tian ministry.  This  lectureship  was  not  instituted  to 
invade  fields  already  ably  occupied  by  expert  profes- 
sional instruction  in  the  seminary  curriculum.  Recent 
years  have  been  affluent  also  in  the  production  of 
monographs  upon  this  subject.  On  my  own  library 
shelves,  as  on  those  of  any  clergyman,  without  special 
attempt  to  assemble  them,  I  count  twenty  such  vol- 
umes or  more,  by  the  greatest  masters  of  the  art  of 
preaching  in  our  day, — Liddon  of  London,  and  Dale 
of  Birmington,  Stalker  of  Glasgow,  and  Watson  of 
Liverpool,  Christlieb  of  Bonn,  as  well  as  Beecher, 
Burton,  Broadus,  Behrends,  Greer,  Van  Dyke  Tucker 
13 


14  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

of  our  own  country  and,  noblest  among  the  noble, 
perhaps,  our  Bishop  Brooks.  To  echo  these  masters 
were  needless  :  to  rival  them  impossible. 

If  you  ask,  therefore,  for  good  advice  about  preach- 
ing, for  rules,  maxims,  illustrative  incidents,  I  simply, 
with  a  half-whimsical  sense  of  my  present  limitations, 
point  you  to  this  row  of  books  on  your  library  shelves. 

What  have  I  then  to  offer  worth  a  moment's  atten- 
tion? Simply  and  solely  this — that  I  may  present 
one  man's  personal  report  of  his  own  wrestle  with  a 
common  task,  as  though  I  voiced  a  comrade's  cheer 
in  the  rush  of  the  charge  to  his  younger  associates 
who  will  be  fighting  when  he  falls. 

My  one  endeavor  then  shall  be  to  reproduce  the 
point  of  view  of  the  seminary  student.  My  guiding 
thought  will  be  to  ask  what  would  have  been  most 
helpful  to  me  had  I  heard  it  twenty-five  years  ago. 
Nor  can  I  be  solicitous  for  that  careful  literary  form 
suited  to  the  oration  or  the  essay.  I  am  seeking  to 
speak  as  I  would  in  my  own  home  to  a  younger  fel- 
low-worker, plainly,  man  to  man.  I  trust  that  the 
adoption  of  this  simpler  method  will  not  seem  as  if 
belittling  the  subject  itself  or  be  aside  from  the  dig- 
nity of  the  foundation  upon  which  these  addresses  are 
given. 

It  may  perhaps  be  said  also  that  these  lectures  do 
not  enter  the  fields  of  apologetics  or  Biblical  criticism. 
The  irenic  thought  and  faith  of  modern  enlightened 
Christendom  is  not  challenged.  The  position  taken 
is  that  of  a  liberal  but  evangelical  faith,  welcoming 
indeed  the  spirit  of  rational  critical  inquiry  as  a  part 
of  the  product  of  the  Spirit  of  God  working  upon 


Introductory  15 

and  within  the  mind  of  man,  but  yet  accepting  also, 
in  common  with  the  Church  universal,  the  substantial 
integrity  of  the  main  New  Testament  literature,  as  in- 
spired by  that  same  Spirit,  and  especially  emphasizing 
the  divine  supremacy  of  Jesus  Christ,  true  Man  of 
men,  and  yet  also  Master  and  Saviour  of  men  and 
Son  of  God. 

But  the  main  introductory  word  is  this  : — My  espe- 
cial helps  in  preparing  these  conversations  have  been 
you  yourselves.  It  is  the  seminary  student  himself 
whom  I  would  summon  to  be  the  real  lecturer  in  this 
course,  for,  if  I  mistake  not,  it  is  in  the  mind  of  the 
typical  student  and  recent  graduate  that  we  shall  find 
reflected,  as  in  a  mirror,  the  true  and  vital  aspects  of 
our  vocation. 

And  this  leads  me  to  tell  how  I  have  been  led  to 
choose  this  path  of  approach  to  our  theme.  Some 
months  ago,  I  had  the  pleasure  to  spend  a  few  days 
in  this  institution  and  enjoy  the  opportunity  which 
you  freely  gave  to  me  of  meeting  personally  the  men 
of  the  classes,  and  I  ventured  to  ask  them  at  what 
points  the  problems  of  our  great  vocation  were  press- 
ing upon  them.  I  also  asked  a  number  of  students  in 
this  institution,  and  in  other  similar  institutions  of 
various  communions  in  the  land,  to  write  to  me, 
frankly  putting  questions  as  to  what  men  now  entering 
the  ministry  most  want  to  hear  about  and  to  know. 
The  answers  which  came  back  from  the  seminary 
students  I  have  collated  and  shall  use  them  as  a  basis 
for  what  I  have  to  say.  I  have  done  this  with  a  pur- 
pose Avhich,  if  I  mistake  not,  is  in  tune  with  a  vital 
philosophy  of  the  subject  itself. 


i6  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

For  the  Christian  student  of  our  day  is  himself  a 
product  of  the  most  finely  selected  influences  of  Chris- 
tian heredity  in  these  ages,  and,  therefore,  in  the 
depths  of  the  modern  typical  student  mind  we  shall 
find  the  true  picture  of  the  vocation  of  the  Christian 
ministry.  How  indeed  should  we  secure  a  true  state- 
ment, not  of  the  mere  technical  outline  perhaps,  but 
of  the  spiritual  content  of  a  great  art, — painting,  for 
example,  or  music?  Possibly  not  merely  through 
learned  monographs,  nor  even  solely  through  technical 
instruction  from  professional  experts.  Might  we  not 
reach  the  heart  of  the  thing  also  by  consulting  the 
fresher  enthusiasm  of  the  younger  students  of  that  art  ? 

So  and  yet  more  of  preaching.  I  would  subpoena 
a  thousand  students  from  our  American  theological 
seminaries,  and  in  their  questions  about  preaching 
seek  to  find  a  true  idea  of  what  preaching  should  be. 
I  am,  therefore,  venturing  to  reverse  the  conventional 
order  of  discussion.  Instead  of  coming  to  the  man 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  subject,  I  will  come  to  the 
subject  from  the  standpoint  of  the  man. 

It  were  easy,  of  course,  at  this  point  to  echo  a  cer- 
tain too  common  satire  levelled  against  alleged  con- 
trasts to  any  such  elevated  idea  of  the  student  as  is 
thus  indicated.  In  a  superficial  way  of  looking  at  the 
matter,  seminary  life  may  easily  be  identified  with 
formalism,  with  traditional  and  perfunctory  discus- 
sions, singularly  learned  and  unconvincing,  and  a 
clever  caricaturist  can  find  his  target  in  supposable  in- 
stances of  theological  students  who,  by  their  im- 
maturity, their  conceit,  their  scholasticism,  or  their 
humdrum  and  mechanical  view  of  their  calling,  be- 


Introductory  17 

little  the  calling  itself.  We  can  imagine  a  professor 
even  without  piety  and  a  student  without  ardor  and 
without  humor,  God's  delicate  test  of  reality  and 
sanity;  but  to  indulge  in  such  persiflage  is,  I  im- 
agine, an  odd  waste  of  time,  beside  being  foolishly 
untrue,  for  such  allegations  as  these  are,  for  the  most 
part,  to  put  it  straight,  a  libel  and  a  lie.  The  philos- 
ophy of  sociological  evolution  refutes  these  libels. 
Their  shallowness  and  falseness  appear  the  moment 
we  admit  in  any  large  way  the  law  of  heredity  in 
modern  Christian  civilization,  and  add  to  that  any 
vital  sense  of  the  meaning  of  Christ's  promise  to  be 
always  in  His  church  and  with  His  people. 

I  insist  upon  this.  The  time  has  come  to  do  ra- 
tional honor  to  that  student  mind  which,  however 
discredited,  is  in  the  next  generation  to  direct  the 
course  of  American  Protestantism. 

The  typical  student  is  more  than  an  individual. 
We  cannot  dismiss  him  as  a  "theologue."  To  say 
"tyro  "  and  "  neophyte  "  does  not  state  him  or  begin 
to  state  him.  Professional  fetters  have  not  yet  bound 
down  his  spirit ;  unfortunate  experience  no  time  yet 
to  chill  him ;  his  own  special  peculiarities  no  oppor- 
tunity to  precipitate  themselves  into  partial,  rigid  and 
unmanageable  theories.  On  the  contrary,  parental 
consecration  of  the  very  parenthood  that  again  has 
consecrated  its  child  to  the  ministry,  the  struggle, 
valiant  and  patient,  to  pay  one's  own  way,  ten  years 
of  intellectual  drill,  "  plain  living  "  and  at  least  think- 
ing of  "high  thinking,"  the  student's  ardor,  the 
scholar's  ambition,  the  young  preacher's  passionate 
aspiration  and  self-despair,  the  mingled  menace  and 


i8  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

attraction  of  yonder  expectant  audience,  the  authority 
of  the  ideal,  the  hunger  to  save,  the  vision  of  Christ, 
the  sudden,  thriUing  dawn  of  a  possible  conception  of 
our  calling,  so  full  of  glowing  life  as  to  leave  one  half 
dizzy,  so  vital  is  it  and  so  splendid ; — all  these  influen- 
ces working  together  have  rendered  our  typical  theo- 
logical student  not  merely  an  educated  gentleman, 
not  merely  a  consecrated  scholar,  not  merely  a  herald 
of  the  Cross  even,  but  they  have  made  him  to  carry  in 
his  own  soul  the  true  mirror  and  image  of  the  voca- 
tion itself  which  he  has  chosen. 

You  will  discount  these  phrases  as  savoring  of 
wordy  exaggeration.  But  I  give  you  back  *'  a  Roland 
for  your  Oliver"  and  discount  your  discount.  To 
state  my  point  truly  I  must  state  it  strongly. 

Let  us  then  analyze  what  the  student  sees  and  feels 
concerning  preaching.  Out  of  the  perhaps  one 
hundred  questions  from  students  to  which  I  have  re- 
ferred, I  have  selected  and,  by  your  permission,  will 
read  forty-four.  I  would  gladly  read  them  all,  but 
time  is  short  and  those  which  I  omit  are  largely 
duplicates  of  those  which  I  read.  Every  one  of  the 
citations  is  a  literal  quotation,  without  the  change  of  a 
line,  from  these  words  and  letters  of  theological  stu- 
dents now  in  our  seminaries,  and  I  will  quote  not 
continuously  from  the  same  man  or  the  same  letter, 
but  arrange  the  questions  in  a  certain  order  of  ap- 
proach to  our  theme. 

(i)  "What  do  men  expect  from  a  preacher  to- 
day? 

(2)  "  What  is  the  message  which  this  age  needs? 

(3)  "While  the  fundamental  elements  of  the  gos- 


Introductory  19 

pel  message  are  the  same  to-day  as  ever,  does  not  this 
age  demand  to  have  certain  of  these  elements  empha- 
sized more  than  others  ?     If  so,  which  ? 

(4)  "  How  much  apologetics  is  needed  in  the 
present  preaching  ? 

(5)  "  May  one  assume  practical  intellectual  agree- 
ment with  himself  in  his  audience  till  the  contrary  is 
shown  ? 

(6)  "  To  what  extent  can  the  modern  minister  use 
the  tone  of  authority  formerly  common  ? 

(7)  "  How  far  ought  one  to  recognize  the  demand 
sometimes  heard  that  ministers  inform  the  people  as  to 
the  present  status  of  Biblical  criticism,  and  do  the 
people  care  for  such  information  ? 

(8)  "  How  far  can  we  get  outside  of  the  questions 
of  higher  criticism  ?  How  can  we  get  right  down  to 
business  ? 

(9)  "How  shall  we  make  men  realize  that  the 
authorship  of  Isaiah  or  the  exact  duration  of  future 
punishment  are  questions  which  do  not  determine 
their  own  immediate  present  duty  to  God  and  to 
society  ? 

(10)  "  Is  it  important  practically  that  the  preacher 
should  make  clear  his  own  view  of  inspiration  as  be- 
tween the  extreme  "dictation  "  on  the  one  hand  and 
the  purely  naturalistic  view  of  inspiration  on  the  other  ? 
Can  most  people  upon  this  and  similar  issues  be 
trusted  to  take  a  via  media  without  special  discussion 
of  the  points  at  issue  ? 

(11)  "  How  can  one  preach  a  system  of  doctrine  ? 
Is  it  best  to  develop  a  system  in  successive  sermons 
from  week  to  week  ? 


20  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

(12)  "  What  should  be  the  relation  of  one's  theo- 
logical system  to  the  sermons  ? 

(13)  "  How  can  the  effect  of  the  sermons  be  made 
cumulative,  each  sermon  playing  into  the  next  so  that 
the  force  of  the  continued  preaching  may  work  towards 
constant  building  of  Christian  character  ? 

(14)  "Does  modern  preaching  emphasize  the 
human  side  of  the  Person  of  Christ  too  much  ? 

(15)  "  What  has  become  in  modern  preaching  of 
the  personal  appeal  to  the  unconverted  ? 

(16)  "  How  can  I  reach  the  unrepentant  sinner  in 
the  congregation  ? 

(17)  "How  can  the  preacher  reach  the  hearers 
who  say  the  sermon  is  good  but  who  make  no  effort  to 
comply  with  it  ? 

(18)  "  How  can  the  preacher  touch  the  practical, 
hard-headed  business  man  in  middle  life  who  has  lost 
the  ideals  which  he  cherished  in  his  youth  and  yet 
who  is  an  honest,  honorable,  public-spirited  citizen 
but  not  a  church  member  ? 

(19)  "  What  will  rally  to  the  Church  a  larger  per- 
centage of  men  ? 

(20)  "  How  are  young  men  to  be  led  to  the 
Church  and  its  work  ? 

(21)  "How  can  the  children  in  a  congregation 
be  held  by  the  same  sermon  which  is  for  older 
people  ? 

(22)  "To  what  extent  can  the  force  of  personal 
sympathy  be  made  available  in  the  pulpit  ? 

(23)  "  What  should  be  the  relation  of  the  preacher 
to  social  problems  and  political  issues  ? 

(24)  "To  what  extent  shall  the  young  preacher 


Introductory  2 1 

use  his  own  experience,  what  he  has  had,  as  a  source 
of  illustration  in  the  pulpit  ? 

(25)  "  How  shall  one  get  personal  experience  into 
sermonic  form  ? 

(26)  "  How  can  a  man  find  the  common  ground 
between  himself  and  the  congregation  ? 

(27)  '*  How  shall  a  man  sink  out  of  sight  so  that 
men  shall  feel  that  they  are  not  spectators  of  a  human 
performance  but  listeners  to  a  divine  message  ? 

(28)  "Can  you  give  us  a  relief  picture  of  the 
arena  in  which  we  have  our  task  ? 

(29)  "What  I  want  is  something  objective — a 
clear  analysis  of  the  conditions  of  society,  the  actual 
force  of  the  environment  upon  which  the  preacher 
must  make  his  impression. 

(30)  "  I  want  perspective,  not  merely  to  know  the 
factors  of  preaching,  but  to  know  them  in  due  pro- 
portion and  perspective,  so  as  to  emphasize  the  im- 
portant and  let  the  unimportant  go. 

(31)  "How  shall  I,  first,  know  the  environment; 
and,  secondly,  know  myself  in  adaptation  to  it? 

(32)  "In  our  seminary  we  would  like  to  hear 
something  definite  and  strong  about  the  weapons  we 
have  to  use, — both  the  certainties  of  truth  which  will 
•be  most  effective,  and  also  the  intellectual  resources 
which  are  most  called  into  play. 

(33)  "  I  have  a  latent,  vague  feeling  of  misgiving 
in  my  ignorance  as  to  what  truth  can  be  made  most 
effective.  I  want  information  on  definite  points:  — 
How  long  to  preach  ? ' '  (Which  recalls  the  re- 
sponse of  the  Scotch  professor  when  asked  that  ques- 
tion:     "A  half  hour,  with  a  leaning  to  the  side  of 


22  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

mercy.")  "How  much  illustration  to  use?  How 
definite  shall  the  application  be  ?  Shall  one  directly 
aim  at  individuals  ? 

(34)  ''As  I  meet  my  fellow-students  in  our  insti- 
tutions, I  become  aware  of  a  common  feeling  of  a 
certain  hopelessness  in  view  of  the  vastness  and 
variety  of  the  preacher's  duty. 

(35)  "  How  shall  I  best  analyze  myself  in  relation 
to  preaching  ? 

(36)  "  What  are  the  qualities  and  powers  to  rate 
highest  in  taking  an  inventory  of  one's  resources? 

(37)  "I  want  to  know  what  I  ought  to  want  in 
preaching  ? 

(38)  "Knowing  the  real  sociological  conditions 
does  not  seem  to  encourage  and  help  me  much.  I 
want  to  know  more  about  the  secret  of  power  in  my 
message. 

(39)  "I  know  my  message;  I  do  not  know  the 
field.  We  get  in  the  seminary  the  analysis  of  the 
message,  and  of  ourselves  in  part.  What  I  want  is 
knowledge  of  the  field  from  the  man  who  has  been 
tliere. 

(40)  "I  want  more  vital  touch  with  the  life  side 
of  preaching. 

(41)  "  What  I  want  is  to  know  how  to  translate  my 
own  natural  way  of  expressing  the  truth  into  such  a 
way  of  expressing  it  as  shall  be  telling  and  winning  in 
effect  upon  the  people  I  am  speaking  to. 

(42)  "  How  shall  I  put  what  seems  vital  truth  to 
me  in  the  way  I  naturally  put  it,  so  it  shall  seem  vital 
truth  to  John  Smith  in  the  pew  yonder,  in  the  way 
John  Smith  naturally  expresses  himself? 


Introductory  23 

(43)  "  Can  a  man  definitely  count  upon  receiving 
special  aid  from  on  high  in  addition  to  the  natural 
powers  of  his  own  mind  ? 

(44)  "  How  can  I  realize  three  things  : — ist.  The 
field  in  which  I  have  to  work, — what  people  are  really 
thinking  and  feeling?  2d.  What  I  have  in  myself ? 
3d.  How  the  Holy  Spirit  might  be  supposed  to  in- 
fluence the  mind,  and  how  shall  one  render  due 
obedience  to  the  impression  thus  conveyed?  " 

I  do  not  know  what  may  be  thought  of  these  ques- 
tions. To  me  they  seem  to  be  quite  the  most  re- 
markable series  of  interrogatories  from  candidates  for 
a  calling,  concerning  that  calling  itself,  which  I  have 
ever  seen.  You  will  mark  the  curiously  complete  e>i- 
semble  of  the  questions,  so  varied  in  form,  yet  so 
completely  pervaded  by  a  common  inner  spirit. 

Are  they  merely  questionings?  They  seem  to  me 
to  be  very  much  more.  They  denote  a  certain  atti- 
tude of  the  modern  student's  mind,  touched  at  once 
with  the  spirit  of  the  modern  time  and  the  spirit  of 
Jesus,  at  once  bowed  by  the  majesty  and  fired  by  the 
fascination  of  a  supreme  vocation  as  it  presents  itself 
under  living,  current  forms. 

But  more  than  this.  Am  I  in  error  in  believing 
that  one  sees  revealed  in  these  questions  the  true  line- 
aments of  our  vocation  itself?  Not  so  much  the 
homiletic  science  thereof;  not  so  much  the  profes- 
sional technique  thereof,  but  the  vital  content  thereof, 
the  humane  and  holy  genius  of  our  calling.  We  are 
then  to  analyze  what  we  find  here  in  order  to  obtain 
our  working  definition  of  Christian  preaching. 


24  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

And  first  we  set  aside  for  the  moment  certain  ele- 
ments which  are  so  general  as  not  to  appertain  spe- 
cifically to  preaching,  because  equally  applicable  to 
other  forms  of  Christian  service. 

A  didactic  element,  for  example,  is  of  course  pres- 
ent and  ever  preeminent  in  preaching.  Preaching  is 
teaching ;  but  so  is  Sunday-school  instruction  teach- 
ing, or  ought  to  be ;  so  are  seminary  lectures  teach- 
ing ;  so  are  tracts  teaching,  occasionally ;  but  they 
are  not  preaching.  Expounding  the  Scriptures  may 
be  preaching,  or  it  may  not  be.  So  in  the  opposite 
direction.  A  hortatory  element  enters  into  preaching. 
Preaching  is  exhortation;  but  so  is  a  private  inter- 
view with  a  friend. 

Segregating  then  that  which  applies  solely  to  preach- 
ing, we  find  the  elements  which  are  paramount  in  the 
student's  view  of  his  vocation  to  divide  themselves 
into  two  main  groups  of  factors.  The  first  of  these 
groups  of  factors  relates  to  preaching  as  an  art — a 
practical  art. 

The  student  looks  out  upon  his  calling  as  involving 
at  its  supreme  moment  a  wrestle  with  an  audience.  He 
sees  in  his  mind's  eye  a  thousand  men  waiting,  care- 
less, callous,  dizzy  with  the  week's  whirl,  dead  in  sins. 
In  front  of  them  the  preacher  asks  himself — '-'What  is 
preaching?  Telling  these  men  what  I  think?  "  Why, 
yes,  in  a  sense.  But  that  alone  is  like  talking  to  a 
fish  instead  of  fishing  for  him.  Preaching  is  not 
soliloquy.  What  then  is  preaching?  Stating  what 
the  Bible  tells?  Yes,  certainly,  for  the  Biblical 
thought  is  the  thought  of  the  Infinite  disclosed 
through  the   divinely  selected  and   inspired   human 


Introductory  25 

development     of    a    special    race    for    a    thousand 
years. 

But  even  this  by  itself  is  not  preaching,  so  runs  the 
student's  thought.  Preaching  is  telling  all  this  so  that 
it  will  reach  men,  so  that  it  will  convince,  persuade, 
win,  save  some  among  that  thousand  men.  In  other 
words,  preaching  is  an  art^ — the  supreme  form  of  that 
highest  art  of  man,  the  art  of  the  orator,  the  art  of 
persuasion,  the  art  of  so  stating  the  truth  as  to  make 
the  hearer's  attitude  towards  it  identical  with  that  of 
the  speaker ;  the  art  of  roused  manhood  in  fit  public 
action,  to  the  end  of  winning,  through  speech,  his 
fellow-men.  As  an  illustration  of  this  read,  if  you 
please,  that  wonderfully  vivid  description  of  the 
preaching  of  Thomas  Chalmers,  contained  in  a  short 
essay  on  Chalmers  by  Dr.  John  Brown  of  Edinburgh. 

But  recurring  again  to  our  forty-four  questions, 
what  more  do  we  find  ?  Every  one  must  see  that  this 
thought  of  preaching,  as  an  art,  even  the  noblest,  is 
not  the  sole  or  even  the  chief  factor  in  the  student's 
conception.  Back  of  the  art  lies  another  group  of 
factors,  far  grander  and  more  spiritual.  How  shall 
we  entitle  this  second  group?  I  venture  to  indicate 
the  genius  of  the  answer  by  using  reverently  that  rich, 
divine  Avord — Incarnation. 

For  if  I  do  not  misread  the  intuition  of  the  student 
mind,  it  is  to  the  effect  that  a  genuine  Christian  min-  y' 
istry  is  in  the  very  heart  of  it,  in  some  degree  a  rein- 
carnation of  the  Truth  and  Spirit  of  Christ.  It  is 
more  than  a  report  of  the  truth  ;  it  is  a  living  present- 
ment of  it — an  embodiment  of  it.  Preaching  is  in  the 
man,  not  in  the  sermon  alone  or  chiefly.     Preaching 


26  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

must  have  living  body  and  movement.  It  must  in- 
carnadine the  otherwise  statuesque  and  palUd  didactic 
elements.  It  must,  under  human  limitations,  reincar- 
nate something  of  the  great  Incarnation. 

In  this  glowing  and  profound  conception  of  preach- 
ing as  a  reproduction  of  Christ,  mere  professionalism 
sinks  out  of  sight ;  mere  art  is  forgotten.  Didactic 
utterance  seems  to  be  only  the  outer  vestibule  for  this 
vivid  and  vital  thing,  in  which  the  eternal  IVord — 
\,^  the  Son  of  God — becomes  Himself  reproduced,  in 
some  dim  sign  and  token  at  least,  in  the  word  of  man, 
in  the  roused,  human  personality  which  pours  itself 
into  the  spoken  syllables. 

In  this  intuition  as  to  the  true  spiritual  content  and 
method  of  Christian  preaching,  the  profounder  biology 
and  the  profounder  philology  unite.  The  deeper 
philosophy  of  life  in  its  relation  to  language  is  in- 
voked. Intellectual  processes,  literary  structure,  vocal 
utterance,  manner,  gesture,  all  become  moulds  which 
the  nimble  and  fluent  personal  spirit  at  once  creates 
and  fills,  so  that  the  result  suggests  at  least,  if  God 
will,  the  tone,  the  cadence,  the  spirit  of  the  Man  of 
Calvary,  the  Christ  of  God. 

As  this  idea  reveals  itself  to  the  reverent  young 
preacher,  sentences  of  Scripture  which  had  been  mere 
mystical  phrases,  like  silent  mist-covered  geyser  pools, 
start  out  and  up  from  the  page  into  new  and  com- 
manding life. 
\  ^Matthew  lo  :  20. — "It  is  not  ye  that  speak,  but 

the  spirit  of  your  Father  that  speaketh  in  you." 

1  The  citations  are  from  the  "  American  Revision  "  of  the 
N.  T. 


Introductory  27 

John  16  :  13. — "When  He,  the  Spirit  of  truth,  is 
come,  He  shall  guide  you  into  all  the  truth."  14th 
verse — "  He  shall  take  of  mine  and  shall  declare  it 
unto  you." 

Acts  6  :  15. — "All  that  sat  in  the  council,  fastening 
their  eyes  on  him,  saw  his  face  as  it  had  been  the 
face  of  an  angel." 

First  letter  to  Corinth,  2:  16. — "We  have  the 
mind  of  Christ." 

Galatians  2  :  20. — "  Christ  liveth  in  me." 

Second  letter  to  Timothy,  i  :  14. — "The  Holy 
Spirit  which  dwelleth  in  us."  4:  17. — "The  Lord 
stood  by  me,  and  strengthened  me ;  that  through  me 
the  message  might  be  fully  proclaimed." 

These  are  not  merely  first  century  specialties  and 
refinements  of  apostolic  prerogative ;  they  are  of  the 
midmost  life  of  all  genuine  Christian  preaching  in 
every  age. 

But  this  is  not  the  end.  These  two  great  groups 
of  factors  in  preaching,  that  which  makes  of  it  an  art, 
and  that  which  makes  of  it  a  true  spiritual  reincarna- 
tion of  the  Eternal  Word,  are  not  sharply  severed  and 
separated,  but  shade  into  each  other,  only  with  the 
spiritual  factors  always  in  the  ascendant. 

Art,  in  any  lofty  philosophy  of  it,  shades  up  into  the 
spirit  of  the  incarnation  itself,  through  its  emphasis 
upon  the  element  of  beauty.  A  noble  art  in  preach- 
ing passes  up  inevitably  through  the  medium  of  beauty 
into  the  apprehension  of  that  "  grace, ^'  that  charm  of 
spiritual  loveliness,  that  beauty  of  moral  movement, 
which  is  the  peculiar  and  winning  trait  of  the  supreme 
incarnation  in  Jesus  Christ,  and  is  also  the  supreme 


28  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

charm  of  true  preaching,  as  distinguished  from  other 
forms  of  public  address.  The  final  impulse  of  a 
noble  art  by  which  truth  seeks  to  disclose  itself  in 
forms  of  beauty  so  as  to  win  the  mind,  rises,  without 
a  break,  into  the  holy  passion  to  reproduce  the 
"grace"  of  Christ,  so  as  to  save  the  soul.  Thus  is 
produced  a  certain  special  and  vital  tone  in  preaching, 
the  tone  best  suited  at  once  to  attract  and  to  win,  a 
rational  earnestness,  blended  with  a  swift,  glad  grace, 
— a  tone  beautiful  and  holy,  like  music  on  Olivet 
after  the  Resurrection. 

At  this  point  we  arrive  then  at  what  for  the  present 
purpose  may  serve  as  our  definition  of  the  idea  of 
preaching.  Following  the  analysis  of  what  we  dis- 
cover in  the  depths  of  the  student  mind,  we  reach 
that  working  description  of  preaching  which  will  con- 
trol the  following  five  simple  addresses  in  this  course. 
And  we  venture  thus  to  phrase  our  idea. 

Christian  preaching  in  its  unique  distinction,  in- 
volves the  blending  of  an  art  and  an  incarnation — the 
noblest  art  and  the  purest  incarnation,  yet  so  as  that 
the  separate  sense  of  the  art  disappears  in  the  superior 
and  sacred  urgency  of  the  incarnation. 

This  definition,  to  call  it  such,  is  not,  of  course,  ex- 
haustive. It  is  not  technically  scientific,  and  would 
hardly  be  admissible  in  a  work  on  homiletics.  It 
simply  aims  to  render  back  to  you  in  outline  the  vital 
consciousness  of  your  own  minds  upon  this  subject. 

But  not  even  here  is  the  analysis  quite  ended. 

Recurring  again  to  our  forty-four  questions,  we 
discover  this  further  apprehension  pervading  them, 
that   true   preaching  is  an  incarnation  in  this  sense 


Introductory  29 

also,  that  it  relates  itself  to  every  special  age  or  fresh 
social  environment,  in  a  certain  style  and  form  derived 
from  that  age  and  suited  to  that  environment. 

And  this  subtle  and  pervasive  quality  which  makes 
true  preaching  ever  en  rapport  with  the  age,  incorpo- 
rates itself  in  preaching,  considered  both  as  an  art  and 
as  an  incarnation.  For  the  genius  of  art,  while 
always  true  to  certain  immortal  ideals,  yet  ever  seeks 
to  render  forth  those  ideals  in  the  finest  tone  of  the 
current  time,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  genius  of 
the  Christian  incarnation  is  this — if  I  may  be  per- 
mitted to  quote  from  a  former  address  which  I  had  the 
honor  to  make  at  your  seminary  commencement  in 
1897 — "the  principle  of  embodying  a  higher  spirit  in 
the  finest  forms  of  a  lower  environment,  for  the  sake 
of  lifting  the  whole  of  that  environment  to  a  higher 
level." 

The  question  therefore  rises  into  an  instant  and 
commanding  importance  : — What,  at  the  heart  of  it, 
and  in  the  essence  of  it,  is  this  new  age,  this  novel, 
daring,  critical  present  age  as  differentiated  from  other 
ages,  or  an  advance  upon  them?  To  what  new 
rhythm  is  the  spirit  of  man  marching  to-day  ?  What 
is  the  characteristic,  what  the  mastering  note,  in  the 
thoughts,  in  the  motives,  in  the  errands  of  modern 
life  and  modern  society,  and  how  shall  preaching, 
both  as  art  in  speech  and  as  a  Christian  incarnation, 
relate  itself  to  these  new  currents  of  thought,  of  motive, 
and  of  errand  ? 

For  it  is  possible,  and  even  probable,  that  this 
present  age,  by  its  peculiar  ideas  and  ideals,  by  its 
new  tones  and  forces,  is  bringing  these  two  aspects 


30  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

of  preaching,  the  artistic  and  the  sacramental,  into 
closer  union,  as  well  as  finer  relief,  than  has  ever  been 
witnessed  before. 

This  will  come  up  for  discussion  latter  on,  and  is  a 
blessed  and  prophetic  thing. 

Here,  then,  fairly  on  and  just  within  the  threshold, 
we  leave  our  theme  to-night.  The  current  talk  of  the 
waning  power  of  the  pulpit  is  a  specious  fallacy. 
What  is  true  is  simply  the  waning  power  of  certain 
pulpit  types  that  ought  to  wane.  Men  chatter  of  the 
passing  away  of  eloquence.  Nonsense !  It  is  only 
the  passing  away  of  grandiloquence.  True  eloquence 
is  manhood  in  action — the  soul  on  fire  and  in  fit 
utterance — and  that  is  never  out  of  style. 

Here,  then,  fellow  students,  is  our  scheme  or  rather 
your  scheme  in  the  outline  of  these  forthcoming 
familiar  addresses — yours,  I  say,  rather  than  mine; 
for  I  am  simply  articulating  what,  coming  as  near  to 
you  as  I  can,  I  have  seemed  to  hear  as  the  voice  of 
your  own  minds. 

I  conclude,  therefore,  this  initial  word  with  the 
announcement  of  the  five  titles  for  the  lectures,  if 
one  must  call  them  such,  which  are  arranged  to 
follow. 

For  the  second  lecture, 

Preaching  an  Art. 

3d.     Preaching  an  Incarnation. 

4th.     The  New  Age  and  its  Relation  to  Preaching. 

5th.  The  Preacher  of  To-day  Preparing  his 
Sermon. 

6th.  The  Preacher  of  To-day  before  his  Con- 
gregation. 


LECTURE  II 
PREACHING  AN  ART 


LECTURE  II 

PREACHING  AN  ART 

In  the  consideration  of  this  special  topic  we  must 
at  the  outset  put  in  a  good-natured  demurrer  against 
easy  misconception.  All  separate  discussion  of  preach- 
ing as  an  art  is  liable  to  be  misunderstood,  as  though 
art  were  the  element  supposed  to  be  chiefly  emphasized 
in  pulpit  speech ;  whereas,  in  our  view,  art  holds  but 
the  second  place.     Yet  it  is  really  present. 

Art  in  preaching  not  only  "conceals"  itself,  but 
forgets  itself  at  the  moment  of  utterance,  ' '  the  best 
action  being  involuntary,"  as  Theodore  Christlieb 
finely  says.  Yet  art  is  indispensable  and  is  the  natural 
path  of  that  professional  discipline  which  leads  up  to 
the  higher  factors  in  pulpit  address.  The  case  against 
art  in  the  pulpit,  briefly  stated,  is  this: — Preaching  is 
practical.  It  is  always  supremely  a  wrestle  to  save, 
in  the  large  sense  of  saving.  It  echoes  the  message  of 
the  Most  High.  It  is  not  the  dramatic  imitation  of 
passion  ;  it  is  the  passion  itself.  It  seeks  not  chiefly  to 
please,  as  mere  art  may  do,  but  to  inform,  to  convince, 
to  win  its  hearers.  Its  chief  constituent  is  spiritual 
reality.  It  issues  in  definite  appeal  and  its  main  con- 
cern is  to  urge  that  appeal  effectively.  To  suggest  art 
in  a  business  so  sacred  and  instant  seems  shallow 
impertinence. 

So  strong  is  this  way  of  putting  the  case,  and  so 
33 


34  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

precipitate  the  recoil  from  the  notion  that  preaching  is 
an  art,  however  fine,  that  not  in  a  single  one  of  the 
courses  of  lectures  recently  given  upon  this  subject  in 
our  seminaries,  do  I  recall  any  full  recognition  of  what 
the  art-element  really  is  in  preaching.  Even  so 
supreme  a  preacher  and  expositor  of  preaching  as 
Bishop  Brooks  forbids  art  in  the  pulpit.  In  his  noble 
"Lectures  on  Preaching,"  he  remarks: — "The 
definite  and  immediate  purpose  which  a  sermon  has 
set  before  it  makes  it  impossible  to  consider  it  as  a 
work  of  art."  Let  me  quote  a  little  further  from  the 
uncompromising  sentences  of  the  great  preacher  of 
"Trinity"  upon  this  point,  for  I  would  do  utter 
justice  to  the  prejudice  against  art  in  preaching ;  and 
if  the  prejudice  has  the  better  reason  of  the  case  I 
should  wish  that  it,  and  not  my  simple  plea  on  the 
other  side,  might  be  remembered.  "  It  (the  sermon) 
knows  no  essential  and  eternal  type,  but  its  law  for 
what  it  ought  to  be  comes  from  the  needs  and  fickle 
changes  of  the  men  for  whom  it  lives.  Now  this 
is  thoroughly  inartistic.  Art  contemplates  and 
serves  the  absolute  beauty.  The  simple  work  of 
art  is  the  pure  utterance  of  beautiful  thought  in 
beautiful  form  without  further  purpose  than  simply 
that  it  should  be  uttered.  .  .  .  Art  knows  nothing 
of  the  tumultuous  eagerness  of  earnest  purpose."  It 
might  be  fairly  questioned,  perhaps,  whether  such  a 
wholesale  verdict  as  this  is  consistent  with  the  truest 
view  of  art,  or  with  the  history  of  art  in  the  world. 
Not  only  in  the  fields  of  music,  painting,  sculpture,  or 
in  the  field  of  literature,  or  in  the  fields  of  the  nobler 
drama,   but   also  in  that  supreme  field  of   oratory, 


Preaching  an  Art  35 

which  in  some  sense  combines  the  best  of  all  the  other 

fields,  art  has  a  divine  right  to  be ;  and  surely  preach- 
ing is  a  form  of  oratory.  And  the  reason  for  this  is 
plain,  for  art  is  devoted  to  a  principle  with  which  God 
has  seen  fit  everywhere  to  accompany  His  proclama- 
tion of  truth  in  nature,  viz.,  the  principle  of  beauty. 
Art,  as  well  as  law,  ' '  hath  her  seat  in  the  bosom  of 
God." 

The  prejudice  against  art  in  preaching,  therefore, 
seems  to  me  mistaken  and  to  involve  logically  an  im- 
pugning of  the  very  method  of  God  Himself  in 
dealing  with  men. 

We  must  retreat  upon  a  far  profounder  philosophy 
of  art  and  of  the  aesthetic  principle  in  human  effort 
and  in  the  expression  of  the  human  soul. 

Let  us  avoid  didactics  as  much  as  in  us  lies,  but 
remind  ourselves  of  one  or  two  first  principles.  We 
use  the  word  art,  I  suppose,  in  two  senses  : — ist,  in 
the  practical  sense,  as  describing  the  skillful  adapta- 
tion of  method  to  gain  a  given  end.  In  this  sense, 
oratory  is  a  practical  art,  because  it  seeks  to  persuade 
the  hearer  to  practical  action. 

2d.  We  employ  the  word  art  in  the  more  ideal 
sense,  to  denote  the  principle  which  seeks  to  express  a 
truth  in  forms  of  beauty,  with  the  result  of  producing 
in  the  mind  a  certain  expansion  and  delight.  This 
is  the  generic  use  of  the  word  in  literature  and  in  the 
entire  aesthetic  realm.  Now,  the  superb  glory  of  the 
preacher's  art  consists  in  the  unique  fact  that  these 
two  conceptions  of  art  coalesce  in  their  application  to 
preaching.  Preaching  is  art  in  the  practical  sense  in 
that  it  is  the  skillful  use  of  the  resources  of  public 


36  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

speech  to  attain  the  end  of  practical  action.  Preach- 
ing is  art  also  in  the  ideal  sense  in  that  it  seeks  to  ex- 
press the  highest  truth  in  forms  of  the  purest  beauty. 
But  the  special  point  now  is  that  preaching  is  peculiarly 
the  most  noble  art  in  that  it  unites  these  two  func- 
tions, so  that  the  very  form  and  method  which  fulfill 
the  practical  errand,  also  realize  the  ideal  charm. 

In  preaching,  the  really  winning  is  the  nobly  beau- 
tiful, and  in  no  other  field  of  human  effort  is  this 
identification  between  the  practical  and  ideal  aspects 
of  art  so  perfect.  In  our  use  of  the  word  art,  there- 
fore, in  the  following  brief  discussion,  these  two  con- 
ceptions of  art  may  be  merged  in  one. 

Let  us  then  advance  by  a  series  of  three  or  four 
simple  steps  from  the  outer  and  coarser  to  the  inner 
and  finer  elements  of  what  we  may  call  art  in 
preaching. 

First. — In  the  outer  vestibule  of  this  art  stands,  of 
course,  the  professional  technique  of  the  public 
speaker,  the  conventional  rules  for  correct  and  at- 
tractive speech,  as  to  the  use  of  the  voice,  as  to  man- 
ner and  gesture.  Your  text-books  tell  you  these 
things  far  better  than  I  could,  and  they  need  not 
detain  us  now.  Here  also  belong  the  maxims  laid 
down  in  the  manuals  upon  rhetoric  and  logic.  Yet 
important  as  these  rules  are  they  are  but  the  furniture 
of  the  vestibule  in  any  true  philosophy  of  art  as  related 
to  preaching. 

Second. — We  advance  a  step  further  and  remind 
ourselves  again  of  that  fundamental  principle  by 
which  art  has  everywhere,  especially  in  the  noblest 
ages  and  among  the  finest  races,  enchanted  the  hu- 


Preaching  an  Art  37 

man  mind.  This  is  the  principle  of  beauty,  regarded 
not  as  a  mere  accident  of  form,  not  as  a  mere  robe  of 
truth  even,  but  as  a  part  of  truth  itself,  a  permanent 
principle  in  the  Eternal  Mind. 

May  we  not  surmise  even  that  this  mystery  of 
beauty  provides  the  medium  between  truth  on  the 
one  hand  and  joy  on  the  other.  All  real  sanity  in- 
cludes something  of  gaiety  and  grace.  Virgil's  senti- 
ment, "  Gratior  ac  pulchro  veniens  in  corpore  virtus  " 
is  fulfilled  in  the  "grace  and  truth"  of  the  gospels. 
The  law  of  art  reflects  the  progress  of  the  mind  from 
truth,  through  beauty,  to  joy  and  joyful  action.  Or, 
to  put  the  matter  in  another  way,  beauty  bridges  the 
gulf  between  thought  and  life.  True  art  in  expression 
is,  therefore,  no  mannerism,  no  artifice,  but  is  of  the 
living  essence  of  truth  and  of  man. 

The  preacher  then,  as  an  artist,  whether  he  regards 
his  art  on  the  practical  side  as  a  method  of  winning 
men  or,  on  the  more  ideal  side,  as  the  incorporation 
of  truth  in  forms  of  beauty,  should  from  the  beginning 
cultivate  his  susceptibility  to  beauty.  He  will  discover 
such  beauty  in  the  ordered  play  of  the  material  world, 
in  man,  who  is  the  blossom  of  the  world,  in  history 
and  in  poetry,  and  in  the  rhythm  of  rational  thought 
in  the  human  mind. 

One  must  remind  himself,  of  course,  that  just  here 
is  an  easy  door  into  all  sorts  of  foolish  fancies.  The 
candid  answer  given  by  his  friend  to  the  amateur 
painter  who  asked  him  "about  how  much  do  you 
think  I  ought  to  get  for  this  picture?  "  "About  six 
months,"  is  not  too  caustic  to  apply  to  the  preacher 
who  substitutes  high-flown  sentiment  concerning  "  ar- 


38  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

tistic  beauty"  in  the  sermon  for  "the  weightier  mat- 
ters of  the  law,  judgment,  mercy  and  faith."  But 
such  fancies  are  the  counterfeit  of  the  real  thing  we 
are  speaking  of.  The  preacher  must  study  truth  in 
beauty,  and  beauty  in  truth. 

And  this  openness  of  mind  to  the  beautiful  may  be 
cultivated  and  should  be,  deliberately  and  constantly, 
— first,  in  the  open  air,  in  fellowship  with  what  St. 
Francis  would  have  called  his  "brothers,"  the  mead- 
ows, the  rivers  and  hills,  as  well  as  by  the  open  sea 
and  beneath  those  "wonderful  clear  nights  of  stars," 
to  use  Stevenson's  phrase,  which  God  gives  to  New 
Englanders,  It  is  well  that  a  minister  should  be 
something  of  a  cragsman. 

Then,  next  to  this,  the  young  preacher  should  study 
the  nobler  beauty  by  reading  history  and  poetry,  and 
in  this  order,  I  think  ;  that  is,  if  history  be  read  with 
something  of  imagination,  and  if,  on  the  other  hand, 
poetry  be  read  with  a  steady  searchlight  out  for 
reality,  and  perhaps  a  mental  mackintosh  ready  for 
use  against  gush  and  bathos,  and  all  that  foam  of 
iridescent  fancy-bubbles  which  look  like  soaring 
spheres,  but  are  exactly  "suds"  and  nothing  more. 

For  because  the  human  mind  originates  with  God, 
who  always  expresses  His  truth  beautifully,  therefore 
the  preacher  of  God  can  train  himself  to  relish  and 
adopt  something  of  the  method  of  beauty  in  stating 
God's  truth. 

And  if  one  is  eager  to  split  hairs  upon  the  question 
as  to  the  order  and  rank  of  precedence  in  this  realm 
of  the  beautiful,  he  might  say  this: — that  the  beauty 
of  form  is  higher  than  the  beauty  of  color,  and  the 


Preaching  an  Art  39 

beauty  of  movement  is  highest  of  all.  Sinewy,  swift 
logic  is  beautiful  even  without  a  single  ornament,  as 
the  curve  of  a  cannon  shot  is  beautiful ;  and  without 
clear  progress  there  is  no  beauty  in  a  sermon.  In- 
deed, the  very  highest  beauty  is  the  beauty  of  moral 
movement,  and  this  is  what  Ave  rightly  call  "  grace," 
the  exquisite  loveliness  of  moral  action,  the  quality 
so  characteristic  of  the  <' Beautiful  Galilean."  Thus, 
as  we  shall  see,  the  very  highest  art  leads  us  into  the 
doorway  of  the  Incarnation  itself. 

What  a  preacher  should  strive  for  is  fine  form  in  fit 
action,  and  when  I  say  strive,  I  mean  strive,  as  an 
oarsman  trains  himself  for  the  race.  To  use  our 
rifle-shot  vernacular,  without  "go" — and  a  very  fine 
kmd  of  "go" — there  is  no  sermon.  Prolixity,  gar- 
rulity, which  are  blemishes  in  any  speaker,  are  for  the 
preacher  sins.  Correctness  itself  is  of  less  value  than 
spontaneity.  Who  can  endure  a  man  so  correct  that 
he  is  nothing  else  ? 

Third. — The  implement  of  art  for  the  preacher 
is  language.  He  must  train  himself,  therefore,  to 
honor  words.  I  had  almost  said  to  reverence  them, 
because  words  are  more  than  the  mere  scenery  of 
thought;  they  are  its  "living  garment,"  to  employ 
Goethe's  phrase,  or,  to  change  the  figure,  words  are 
precious  flasks,  brimful  of  the  life  of  the  generations. 
Philology  runs  back  to  biology.  "Prose,"  says 
Emerson,  "is  fossil  poetry."  So  it  is  if  we  suppose 
the  fossils  endued  with  the  cunning  art  of  continuing 
in  life.  And  we  shall  further  remember  that  language 
as  such  is  not  only  thought  in  form  but  thought  in 
beautiful  form.     The  genius  of  language  is  the  pic* 


40  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

torial  genius.  A  word  is  a  picture,  a  crystal  on  fire. 
In  the  depths  of  a  single,  simple  word  the  primary 
principles  of  beauty  appear,  like  pearls  at  the  bottom 
of  a  pool.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say,  therefore, 
that  a  man  who  would  be  a  true  artist  in  speech,  ap- 
proximates adoration  in  his  sentiment  towards  lan- 
guage. He  takes  off  his  hat  in  front  of  a  word.  He 
respects  language  too  much  to  use  it  carelessly,  for 
in  the  conception  of  true  art  words  are  the  incarnation 
of  spirit. 

This  divine  quality  in  language  is  a  part  of  what 
our  brethren  who  believe  in  "  verbal  inspiration"  are 
so  unwilling  to  let  slip ;  and  it  is  well  that  we  should 
all  hold  to  so  much  of  the  doctrine  of  verbal  inspira- 
tion as  that. 

These  are,  of  course,  only  the  commonest  frag- 
mentary hints  within  the  arena  of  this  profound  and 
fascinating  field,  the  underlying  philosophy  of  art  in 
public  speech.  But  our  errand  is  specific,  and  the 
path  is  long  and  we  are  in  haste  to  arrive  at  more 
practical  details,  so  we  must  hasten  onward. 

Fourth. — The  fourth  great  principle  in  the  relation 
of  art  to  preaching  appears  to  be  deeper  still.  It 
rises  into  view  the  moment  we  remember  that  the 
minister  is  more  than  an  orator.  He,  as  a  personality, 
stands  for  his  message  as  well  as  articulates  it.  The 
mere  lecturer  of  the  lyceum  will  enchant  his  auditors 
by  graceful  phrases.  The  orator  of  the  day  at  civic 
celebrations  will  stir  the  crowd  into  what  the  journals 
call  "billows  of  enthusiasm."  But  lecturer  and 
orator  pass  away.  The  occasion  is  an  occasion  and 
no  more.     The  man  behind  the  speech,  the  permanent 


Preaching  an  Art  4.1 

personality  of  the  orator,  is  the  least  emphasized,  per- 
haps the  least  remembered  feature  in  the  performance. 

But  the  preacher  on  the  other  hand  addresses  the 
same  people  all  the  year  round.  They  come  to  know 
him.  The  man  behind  the  speech  is  the  principal 
thing.  Art  with  him,  therefore,  the  impulse  to  render 
the  truth  in  forms  of  beauty,  so  as  to  win  mental 
assent,  must  relate  to  other  factors  besides  elocution 
or  even  language, — to  factors  even  more  intimately 
personal. 

In  a  word,  the  law  of  true  art  in  preaching  requires 
that  the  preacher  shall  train  Jmnself  in  beauty  of  soul 
and  of  life,  so  as  to  be  himself  a  language,  an  organ 
of  fine  expression.  The  genius  of  true  art  is  a  genius 
which  incarnates.  Christian  preaching  is  incarnating 
the  whole  soul  in  words.  The  preacher  must,  there- 
fore, develop  within  himself  a  certain  noble  grace  of 
instinctive  and  habitual  feeling  and  action.  He  must 
seek  for  blended  truth  and  charm  in  manhood,  yet 
without  descending  to  mannerism,  and  never  losing 
his  first-hand  clench  on  reality.  This  is  why  in  our 
profession,  as  perhaps  in  no  other,  character  and  the 
steady  struggle  after  character,  turn  themselves  so  di- 
rectly into  professional  and  even  literary  capital. 

We  say,  therefore,  this  thing  to  each  other,  that 
we  are  to  seek  our  best  "style,"  to  call  it  such,  in 
preaching,  not  in  the  emphasis  upon  some  one  specific 
literary  turn,  but  in  some  combination  of  qualities, 
which  for  each  man  expresses  ////;/,  and  nobody  else, 
most  and  best.  The  best  way  to  acquire  a  fine  style 
is  to  develop  a  fine  soul  and  then  pour  out  the  whole 
of  it  in  one's  preaching.     Art,  in  preaching  especially, 


42  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

is,  first,  to  unify  manhood,  and  then  to  express  that 
unity.  Cheap,  therefore,  is  the  folly  of  artificial  de- 
vices and  tricks  of  declamation.  A  man  should 
preach  as  he  walks,  naturally.  Style  is  the  entirety 
of  natural  force  in  free,  roused  action.  Dr.  Thomp- 
son, master  of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  once  thus 
described  a  young  fop  of  a  tutor — "  That  all  the  time 
he  could  spare  from  the  adornment  of  his  person  he 
conscientiously  devoted  to  the  neglect  of  his  duties." 
And  the  satire  is  not  too  keen  to  describe  the  false 
method  of  the  young  minister  who  spends  his  strength 
in  laboriously  tying  the  cravats  of  rhetoric,  studying 
gesture,  now  one  hand  and  now  the  other ;  who  hunts 
for  glittering  phrases  in  quotation  marks ;  who  polishes 
inanities ;  who  in  all  his  utterance  suggests  the  intel- 
lectual bandbox  and  boudoir,  and  forgets  the  weightier 
matters  of  the  soul. 

Art  in  preaching  then  is,  after  all,  chiefly  and  at  the 
bottom  of  it,  the  art  of  living,  making  manhood  beau- 
tiful and  holding  it  so — holding  the  whole  man,  clean 
body,  live  brain,  consecrated  spirit, — all  as  one  piece, 
one  lens  set  in  the  white  light  of  truth,  letting  God 
take  care  of  the  image,  if  only  the  crystal  itself  can  be 
kept  consistent  and  clear. 

This  view  of  the  matter  leads  directly  up,  as  we 
shall  see  in  our  next  lecture,  to  the  consideration  of 
preaching  as  a  genuine  and  living  reincarnation  of 
Christ. 

Fifth. — But  not  to  lose  ourselves  in  easy  generaliza- 
tion at  this  point,  we  can  now  go  on  to  notice  how 
this  principle  of  true  art,  the  passion  for  putting  truth 
into  beauty  for  the  sake  of  winning  men,  pervading 


Preaching  an  Art  43 

not  only  the  literary  style  of  the  preacher,  but  also 
pervading  his  intimate  life  and  personality,  appears  in 
practical  exemplification  in  the  sermon. 

According  to  these  principles  the  sermon  is  the 
harmonious  synthesis,  to  speak  in  pedantic  fashion,  of 
three  great  departments  or  norms,  each  of  which  con- 
tributes to  it  an  integral  and  vital  factor. 

I  St,  the  subject; 

2d,  the  speaker ; 

3d,  the  congregation. 

Learning  to  preach  is  learning  to  time  together  these 
three  factors, — the  message  given,  the  man  giving  it, 
the  man  listening  to  it, — so  that  in  the  course  of  years 
a  certain  spontaneous  correlation  comes  to  be  estab- 
lished between  the  three,  which  correlation  the 
preacher  incessantly  establishes  almost  without  know- 
ing it  every  time  he  preaches,  and  which  for  him  is 
style. 

I  St,  as  to  the  subject.  Is  it  true,  vital,  strong, 
drawn  naturally,  not  only  from  the  text  but  from  the 
context,  and  from  the  entire  generic  undertone  of  the 
document  and  of  scripture  at  large  ?  Does  it  carry  in 
it  the  essential  message  of  the  gospel  ?  Have  I,  the 
preacher,  analyzed  it  simply,  clearly?  Have  I 
made  the  skeleton  of  it  (to  use  our  impertinently  ana- 
tomical word)  symmetrical  in  articulation, — able  to 
stand  on  its  feet,  but  with  not  too  many  feet  ?  (Two 
arms  also  are  better  than  ten,  even  for  a  skeleton.)  Is 
the  logic  of  the  sermon  sound  and  straight,  with  pres- 
sure cumulative  ?  Are  the  illustrations  brief,  pat,  not 
overdone  ?  Have  I  opened  sufficiently,  but  not  weari- 
somely, the  varied  wealth  of  side  vistas  along  the  line 


44  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

of  thought  suggested,  without  fettering  or  dela3nng  the 
mid-march  on  the  main  track,  until  the  argument 
reaches  its  climax  in  urgent  and  kindly  appeal  ?  In  a 
word,  is  my  sermon  true  to  the  truth  ? 

Very  well,  if  it  is, — if  all  these  questions  are  duly 
answered — then  the  sermon  is  just  one-third  made. 

2d.  The  preacher  now  enters  the  second  field  of 
self-interrogation  and  asks  :  "  What  did  God  give  to 
vie,  to  me  myself,  in  the  make-up  of  my  mental  faculty  ? 
Is  philosophical  analysis  or  imaginative  description 
the  faculty  that  nature  put  the  accent  on  with  me  ? 
Have  I  put  myself,  my  separate  real  self,  my  whole 
self,  into  my  sermon,  in  the  pattern  which  I  may  think 
God  put  into  the  loom  for  me  and  meant  that  I  should 
fill  out?  Intellect,  humor,  pathos,  passion,  in  just  my 
own  proper  proportion  of  each,  the  native  hue  and 
rhythm  of  my  mind,  have  I  employed  all  this  in  making 
my  sermon  ? ' ' 

Well,  the  answer  will  be,  certainly  not.  Then  re- 
cast the  sermon.  Rearrange.  Rewrite.  Drop  out 
all  the  mere  padding  from  the  sermon  as  it  stood  at 
the  end  of  the  first  scrutiny.  Gain  space  to  put  in  the 
personal  accent, — ^just  as  St.  Paul  did  in  his  letters — 
the  glow  of  experience,  the  real  individuality  of  the 
speaker,  so  that  the  sermon,  without  losing  anything 
that  is  substantial  or  vital  in  the  qualities  realized 
under  the  first  norm,  is  now  also  clothed  with  the  per- 
sonal vitality  drawn  from  the  second. 
3    1  Well  and  good.     Your  sermon  is  now   two-thirds 

<y^  made.  But  there  still  remains  another  third.  The 
preacher  now  enters  a  third  field  of  inquiry,  retaining, 
you  will  observe,  what  is  best  of  number  one  and  two, 


Preaching  an  Art  45 

but  readjusting  it  to  its  immediate,  practical  errand, 
just  as  the  expert  fisherman  readjusts  his  entire  theory 
of  fishing  and  his  own  habitual  method  to  the  particu- 
lar features  of  the  stream,  of  the  pool,  the  underbrush, 
the  state  of  the  weather,  the  exigencies  of  the  hour, 
the  kind  of  fish  he  is  fisliing  for  at  the  moment. 
Questions  like  these  then  arise :  — My  congregation — 
who  are  they  ?  What  are  they  thinking  about  ?  How 
do  their  thoughts  go  ?  What  do  they  need  ?  What 
do  they  think  they  need  ?  What  order  in  the  succes- 
sion of  ideas  (to  recall  your  question  No.  42),  will 
most  come  home  to  old  John  Smith  down  there  in  the 
pew,  and  at  the  same  time  strike  fire  from  old  John's 
son  just  back  from  college? 

The  preacher  in  imagination  leaves  his  pulpit.  He 
becomes  each  one  of  a  hundred  men.  He  sits  in  the 
pew  and  listens  to  himself  How  queer  and  sad  the 
resulting  impression  is  I  How  dull  the  sermon  seems  ! 
He  perceives  that  what  he  has  hitherto  accomplished 
in  making  his  sermon  is  all  too  subjective.  So  again 
out  they  go  from  the  two-thirds  made  sermon,  all  the 
careless  platitudinarian  phrases  that  have  crept  in 
under  norms  one  and  two,  and  the  man  clenches  his 
will  and  wrings  his  soul  in  the  determined  endeavor 
to  substitute  in  their  place  some  form  of  phrase  that 
will  tell  in  the  brain  of  these  people,  even  though  they 
are  fagged  with  the  week's  work.  What  will  arrest  ? 
What  will  move  ?  What  will  win  them  ?  And  thus 
the  sermon  is  again  recast.  But  now,  mark  !  So  deep 
is  the  reasonableness  of  true  art,  so  profound  the  law 
of  true  preaching,  that  the  preacher  will  discover  to 
his  astonishment  as  he  undertakes  this  third  task,  that 


46  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

nothing  really  essential  to  number  one  and  two  need 
be  sacrificed  for  the  sake  of  number  three.  Then 
dawns  on  the  young  preacher's  roused  mind  the  sense 
of  a  possible  and  hitherto  undreamed  of  harmony 
between  these  numbers  or  norms  one,  two  and  three, 
which  is  for  him  style,  a  certain  rhythm  and  march  of 
mind  in  which  each  department  is  at  its  best,  and  yet 
all  three  harmoniously  interacting,  and  in  which,  as 
the  man  grows  older  and  trains  himself,  they  come  to 
interact  spontaneously  and  almost  unconsciously. 

This  is  then  the  way  in  which  the  young,  really 
live  preacher  is  willing  to  drill  and  discipline  himself 
under  his  aspiration  for  noble  art  in  his  calling.  For 
the  final  result  is  precisely  what  we  have  defined  noble 
art  to  be  in  this  field — the  truth  of  God  presented 
through  forms  of  both  personal  and  literary  grace,  to 
the  end  of  securing  winning  impression  upon  the 
mind. 

Of  these  three  elements  in  the  sermon  it  is  number 
three  that  the  young  preacher  is  most  apt  at  first  to 
forget.  And  yet  it  is  this  very  number  three  to  which 
he  will  give  more  and  more  attention  as  he  goes  on  in 
his  work ;  for  we  are  all  of  us  at  first  too  subjective. 

But  there  is  more  in  the  matter  than  this.  The 
profounder  reason  why  we  come  to  dwell  upon  the 
third  class  of  considerations  is  that  here  we  feel  more 
and  more  as  we  grow  older  the  commanding  influence 
upon  true  preaching  of  that  deeper  and  more  spiritual 
conception  of  it,  into  which  true  art  at  its  summit 
leads  us,  viz.,  what  I  have  ventured  to  call  the  sense 
of  the  genius  of  the  Incarnation.  To  that  great  heart 
of  the  matter  we  may  try  to  come  next  week.     Suffice 


Preaching  an  Art  47 

it  to  say  here  that  it  is  in  this  field  which  sometimes  is 
so  pettily  called,  "adapting  oneself  to  the  congrega- 
tion," that  the  very  innermost  spirit  of  the  Incarnation 
ai)pears.  For  the  spirit  of  the  Incarnation  ever 
"empties  itself"  as  Christ  did,  is  willing  to  leave  its 
own  preferred  intellectual  palaces  even,  and  while  re- 
taining essential  truth  to  itself,  will  waive  something 
of  its  selfish  luxuries  of  style,  in  order  to  pour  itself 
into  moulds  of  thought,  matching  with  the  people 
yonder,  in  the  burning  urgency  of  its  passion  to  save 
them. 

Not  to  anticipate,  however,  and  returning  to  our 
specific  theme  to-night,  I  close  with  a  single  reference 
to  that  important  series  of  questions  which  were  our 
starting  point  in  these  discussions.  The  more  de- 
tailed, practical  suggestions  in  response  to  them  will 
fall  within  the  compass  of  the  last  two  lectures  of  this 
course,  but  one  general  remark  rnay  be  made  here. 

You  will  remember  how  through  those  questions, 
from  first  to  last,  runs  the  peremptory  instinct  of 
challenge  upon  preaching  as  a  practical  art,  in  Avhich 
three  things  must  be  taken  into  consideration, — the 
message,  the  speaker,  and  the  hearer.  All  the  ques- 
tions relate  to  one  or  the  other  of  those  three  factors. 
It  seemed  to  be  felt  by  the  questioners  that  preaching 
must  match  the  present  age  while  losing  nothing  of  its 
ancestral  and  sacred  distinction.  Now  this  is  the  very 
thing  we  have  been  speaking  of  as  the  object  of  true 
art  in  preaching. 

Take  question  2,  for  instance  :  "  What  is  the  mes- 
sage which  this  age  needs?  " 

Question  27. — "  How  shall  a  man  sink  out  of  sight 


48  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

so  that  men  shall  feel  that  they  are  not  spectators  of  a 
human  performance,  but  listeners  to  a  divine  mes- 
sage ?  ' ' 

Questions  22  and  24. — "  To  what  extent  can  the 
force  of  personal  sympathy  be  made  available  in  the 
pulpit  ?  To  what  extent  should  the  young  preacher 
use  his  own  experience  as  a  source  of  illustration?  " 

Question  26. — "How  shall  a  man  find  the  com- 
mon ground  between  himself  and  the  congregation?" 

Question  31, — "How  shall  I  know,  first,  the  en- 
vironment, and,  secondly,  myself  in  adaptation  to 
it?" 

How  straight  comes  the  generic  answer  to  these 
questions  along  our  path  of  thought  to-night !  So  far 
as  Art  can  answer  for  Preaching,  her  answer  is,  sum- 
ming up  what  has  been  said, — train  yourself  to  be  in 
person,  and  then  to  express  in  language  truth 
in  forms  of  grace,  Christian  truth  in  forms  of  Chris- 
tian grace,  for  the  purpose  of  winning  men,  and 
always  to  this  end  put  your  sermon  through  three 
test  crucibles,  one  after  the  other, — subject,  speaker, 
hearer — truth,  personality,  environment, — in  each 
adding  a  new  element  and  in  each  burning  all  dross 
away.  It  is  in  such  vital,  trinal  synthesis  that  the 
preacher  finds  true  success.  And  in  it  also  he  finds 
power  and  joy, — in  a  word,  life. 

It  is  a  vital  necessity  that  the  undertone  of  preach- 
ing should  possess  this  living  joy.  The  preacher 
must,  in  the  deepest  sense  of  the  word,  be  '^'^  happy'''' 
in  his  preaching,  not  thinking  about  being  happy,  but 
really  happy,  kindled,  alert,  exhilarated,  joyous. 
With  him,  as  with  his  Master,  the  motto  is  always 


Preaching  an  Art  49 

truth  and  grace.  The  gospel  is  good  news.  Preach- 
ing must  be  genial.  You  say  you  are  to  "preach 
Calvary."  True.  And  in  the  holy  pathos  of  its  re- 
production of  the  spirit  of  the  Cross  lies  the  power  of 
preaching.  But  even  that  Cross  stands  in  the  light. 
It  is  held  up  by  God's  Hand  between  the  gladness  of 
the  Nativity  and  the  glory  of  the  Resurrection. 
"  Who  for  the  joy  that  was  set  before  Him  endured 
the  cross,  despising  shame." 

The  spirit  of  the  true  Christian  preacher  is  not  that 
"forlornly  brave"  altruism,  which  in  our  time  is  the 
most  noble  and  most  pathetic  substitute  for  the  gospel, 
yet  with  the  real  gospel  left  out.  The  pathos  of  sym- 
pathy, indeed,  but  also  the  exhilaration  of  rescue 
dwells  upon  the  high  terraces  to  which  the  genius  of 
Christian  art  conducts  the  preacher.  His  finest  art  is 
the  product  of  his  truest  life,  and  leads  to  still  higher 
life. 

And  thus  we  find  ourselves  brought  directly  in 
front  of  that  great  and  holy  shrine  of  our  calling, 
which  I  have  termed  Freachiii^  an  Incarnation. 


LECTURE  III 
PREACHING  AN  INCARNATION 


LECTURE  III 
PREACHING  AN  INCARNATION 

The  study  of  preaching  as  an  art  brought  us  into 
the  gateway  of  that  highest  thought  of  preaching 
which  makes  of  it  an  incarnation.  Or,  rather,  we 
found  the  former  aspect  of  the  subject  shading  up  into 
the  latter  by  insensible  though  vital  gradations. 

What  then  is  this  higher  life  of  preaching, — the  life 
that  pervades  it  in  every  part,  that  distinguishes  it  in 
every  form,  that  is  the  key  to  its  noblest  meaning,  the 
law  of  its  most  perfect  symmetry,  the  intimate  secret  of 
its  saving  power  ? 

Your  own  forty-four  questions  furnish  the  answer  in 
the  conception  which  we  entitle — though  the  title  lies 
fairly  open  to  criticism  as  being  obscure  or  as  savor- 
ing of  mysticism — Preaching  an  Incarnation. 

Shall  we  not  unite  in  this  simple  prayer — May  that 
Master  and  Lord  whom  we  adore,  and  to  whose  rea- 
sonable and  blessed  ministry  we  have  given  our 
strength,  aid  us  to  apprehend  this  inner  truth  of  His 
calling,  as  we  should,  simply,  sanely,  largely,  in  ra- 
tional perspective,  without  false  fancies,  but  in  the 
clear  light  of  His  own  holy  Word  ! 

Let  me  allude,  in  a  single  sentence  to  my  own  experi- 
ence, and  that  possibly  of  many  ministers.  We  spend 
half  a  life  time  in  active  professional  work  before  we 
fairly  awake  to  apprehend  the  truth  that  preaching  is 
53 


54  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

something  more  than  a  report  of  the  truth,  a  mere 
proclamation  of  the  message  which  historically  we 
know  as  the  gospel. 

You  will  not  misapprehend  me.  We  at  first  con- 
ceive of  Christ  and  the  body  of  His  doctrine  as 
something  historically  objective,  fixed, — in  a  sense, 
statuesque.  Preaching  is  the  attempt  to  call  attention 
to  this  divine  statue,  to  expound  and  commend  this 
objective  body  of  truth.  But  by  and  by  ensues,  little 
by  little,  a  change  from  this  initial  conception, — a 
change  so  radical  that  it  amounts  almost  to  a  new 
revelation  of  the  way  in  which  Christ's  minister  may 
regard  his  vocation  and  may  cultivate  himself  with 
reference  to  it.  And  the  change  is,  in  a  word,  this : 
— the  dawning  sense,  faint  at  first,  but  increasing,  of 
the  meaning  of  the  truth  of  the  Incarnation  in  its 
relation  to  the  work  of  the  preacher,  especially  in 
this  wonderful  modern  time  of  ours. 

One  is  easily  betrayed  into  stilted  language  in 
speaking  of  what  is  a  burning  verity  to  his  own  soul, 
and  yet  Emerson's  word  holds — "  Only  so  much  do  I 
know  as  I  have  lived."  Let  me  hazard  this  illustra- 
tion. It  was  as  though  I  possessed,  in  some  mental 
garden,  a  beautiful  statue  which  I  called  the  gospel, 
which  I  had  studied  a  little,  looked  at  from  several 
points  of  view,  walking  round  and  round  it,  calling 
attention  to  its  beauties,  and  expected  of  course,  to 
find  in  the  morning  when  I  came  into  the  garden,  a 
perfect  statue.  When,  on  a  sudden,  instead  of  finding 
my  statue,  I  find  a  living  man,  glorious,  free,  running, 
racing  on  the  track,  with  eye  on  fire  and  with  instant 
vitality  in  every  limb. 


Preaching  an  Incarnation  55 

The  illustration  is  clumsy  and  yet,  while  the  transi- 
tion of  thought  of  which  I  am  speaking,  as  to  our 
vocation,  is  not  thus  sudden,  but  gradual  and  half 
imperceptible,  the  greatness  of  the  transition  itself  is 
hardly  overstated  by  this  fancy  of  marble  becoming 
man. 

But  I  am  certain  also  that  in  instants  and  flashes,  at 
least,  this  sublimer  sense  of  our  calling  as  a  living  re- 
incarnation of  our  message  stirs  as  if  in  its  sleep  in 
every  man  of  us,  from  the  very  beginning  of  our  min- 
istry. If  you  shall  call  this  latent  conception  forth 
and  at  once  throw  yourselves  out  upon  it,  in 
Christ's  name,  you  will  find  your  whole  vocation,  from 
its  very  first  stadium,  transfigured  and  full  of  life. 

What  then  do  we  mean,  in  the  compactest  way  of 
putting  it,  by  this  phrase — the  Genius  of  the  Incarna- 
tion, as  applied  to  preaching? 

First. — Let  us  remind  ourselves  of  what  the  funda- 
mental truth  of  the  Incarnation  is,  in  our  irenic 
Christian  faith,  for  the  special  idea  Ave  are  seeking 
to  express  is  firmly  embedded  in  the  central  New 
Testament  revelation,  as  well  as  supported  by  the 
profoundest  trend  of  modern  scientific  psychology. 

Waiving  all  scholastic  refinements,  something  like 
this,  in  a  simple,  large  way  of  stating  it,  is  our  faith ; 
— that  the  Infinite  God,  our  Father,  the  supreme, 
personal  Spirit  of  Life,  immanent  in  the  world,  as 
well  as  transcendent  above  it,  for  the  sake  of  men  and 
man's  salvation,  did  pour  Himself,  in  the  person  of 
the  ineffable  and  eternal  Word,  into  a  selected  and 
most  perfect  human  body  and  soul,  a  true  and  living 
man,  in  whom  the  heart  of  God  thus  became  manifest 


56  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

in  such  wise  as  would  form  a  living  and  saving  con- 
nection with  man's  world.  "The  words  that  I  say 
unto  you,  I  speak  not  from  myself,  but  the  Father 
abiding  in  me  doeth  His  works"  (John  14:  10). 
This  is  the  great  Incarnation. 

And  then,  beyond  this,  we  believe  that  this  same 
supreme  law  of  incarnation,  for  the  sake  of  spiritual 
rescue,  still  enforced  itself  and  continued  to  rule  in  a 
second  living  relation  between  Christ  and  those  who 
were  to  be  His  disciples,  spokesmen  and  ambassadors, 
which  amounted  to  a  kind  of  secondary  incarnation, 
though  less  complete.  Nothing  short  of  this  is  His 
own  declaration — "I  in  them  and  thou  in  me,"  an 
incarnation  of  the  Incarnation. 

Observe  the  singular  radiance  of  the  two  converg- 
ing lines  of  light  from  Christ's  words,  saying  in  one 
instance,  "  /  am  the  Light  of  the  world,"  and  in  an- 
other instance,  "  Ye  are  the  light  of  the  world." 
"I,"  "ye."     Ye  shine  by  My  light  in  you. 

Canon  Liddon,  in  his  noble  address  upon  "  Our 
Lord's  Example  the  Strength  of  His  Ministers," 
speaks  of  the  "imitation  of  Christ  as  the  regulating 
principle  of  ministerial  force."  But  are  we  not  justi- 
fied in  substituting  for  that  weak  word  "imitation" 
the  redder  royalty  of  the  word  "incarnation  "  ? 

Still  further,  we  believe  that  the  agency  for  this 
continued  presence  of  Christ  with  those  who  are  to 
speak  for  Him  is  the  Holy  Spirit ;  and  this  Spirit  is  a 
reproducing  Spirit.  For  Who  is  this  Spirit  ?  He  is 
Chris fs  Spirit  as  well  as  the  Spirit  of  God,  "Pro- 
ceeding from  the  Father  and  the  Son."  The  old 
intuition,   developing  itself  almost  spontaneously  in 


Preaching  an  Incarnation  57 

the  more  ethical  and  spiritual  Western  half  of  Chris- 
tendom, finding  its  first  distinct  conciliar  recognition 
perhaps  at  the  third  council  of  Toledo,  589,  a.  d., 
was  justified.  It  had  the  genius  and  the  philosophy 
of  the  Incarnation  behind  it. 

Listen  to  Christ's  own  words,  which  He  is  credibly 
reported  to  have  uttered  in  the  most  solemn  and  tender 
address  which  has  come  down  to  us  in  the  ancient 
documents — "  When  He,  the  Spirit  of  Truth,  is  come, 
He  shall  guide  you  into  all  the  truth."  "He  shall 
not  speak  from  Himself."  "He  shall  take  of  Mine 
and  shall  declare  it  unto  you."  "  He  shall  teach  you 
all  things,  and  bring  to  your  remembrance  all  that  I 
said  unto  you."  That  is  to  say,  the  Holy  Spirit 
carries  on  the  life  of  Christ  in  the  soul  under  the  law 
of  a  continued  and  spiritualized  incarnation.  To  this 
agrees  that  profound  and  powerful  phrase  of  St.  Paul — 
"  The  law  of  the  spirit  of  life  in  Christ  Jesus."  This 
is  the  law  of  the  incarnation,  and  is  a  permanently 
acting  law.  "No  chrisma  without  charisma,'^  says 
Christlieb. 

Now  you  will  reply,  and  it  is  perfectly  true,  that 
this  principle  of  the  living  Christ  with  men  and  within 
men  is  not  the  solitary  prerogative  of  the  Christian 
minister;  it  is  at  the  heart  of  all  true  Christian  man- 
hood as  well.  Certainly.  And  just  because  it  is,  it 
preeminently  constitutes  the  glowing  heart  of  the 
minister's  special  work,  which  is  nothing  unless  it 
springs  aloft  from  the  ground  floor  of  a  full  Christian 
manhood.     "Lay  "  preachers  are  often  real  preachers. 

Second. — We  go  on  then  a  step  further  and  in- 
quire how  this  general  principle  of  Christian  incarna- 


58  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

tion  relates  itself  to  preaching.  It  plainly  represents 
itself  under  two  aspects. — The  one  aspect  is  that 
wherein  we  may  conceive  such  a  derivative  and 
secondary  incarnation  promoted  through  our  own  vo- 
lition ;  that  is,  it  is  the  man  himself  seeking  to  em- 
body Christ's  Spirit  and  Truth.  The  other  aspect  is 
that  of  an  incarnation  accomplished  through  Chris  fs 
volition  in  us,  using  the  natural  force  of  the  man  as 
His  own  organ  of  expression.  Though  practically 
blended  in  consciousness  and  work,  these  two  aspects 
of  the  idea  of  incarnation  may  be  theoretically  dis- 
criminated for  the  sake  of  clearness  in  thought. 

In  the  former  of  these  two  fields  a  preacher  may 
strive  to  incarnate  Christ's  truth  in  this  sense,  that  by 
a  strenuous  self-discipline  he  is  training  himself  to 
reproduce,  not  only  by  spoken  word  but  by  his  whole 
attitude  of  manhood,  by  his  feeling  and  action  in 
preaching,  the  spiritual  tone  and  message  of  his  Master. 
This  is  the  ''Holy  Place"  of  the  incarnation.  The 
volitional  energy  is  the  man's  own.  Here  appears 
the  necessity  for  that  full-toned  manhood  which  is  the 
true  ministerial  manhood.  The  minister  takes  account 
of  his  entire  self — his  "one  world"  to  use  Herbert's 
phrase, — his  body,  brain,  sensibility,  as  well  as  the  great 
central  fires  of  spiritual  impulse,  as  an  organ  of  expres- 
sion which  he  himself  is  to  train  and  fill  with  the  repro- 
duced thought  and  spirit  of  Christ  and  His  revelation. 

But  beyond  this  is  there  not  still  a  more  sacred  and 

interior  phase  of  the  matter?     "Let  each  man  think 

himself  an  act  of  God."^     The  minister,  cleaving  to 

his  New  Testament,  may  humbly  dare  to  regard  him- 

i"Festus,"  Bailey. 


Preaching  an  Incarnation  59 

self  thus  disciplined,  as  an  instrument  which  Christ 
Himself  may  deign  to  touch  and  use  in  the  mystery  of 
His  life  and  grace.  This  surely  is  the  "Holy  of 
Holies"  of  the  preacher's  "incarnation," — a  realm 
of  the  mind,  where  Chrisfs  personal,  living  power 
may  be  supposed  to  supply  the  initial  impulse,  the 
inspiration.  "It  is  no  longer  I  that  live  but  Christ 
liveth  in  me."  May  not  the  wonderful  utterance  fit 
in  with  any  man  or  minister  as  truly  as  with  St.  Paul? 

In  the  practical  consciousness  of  the  preacher  how- 
ever, these  two  mental  processes,  which  we  have  called 
the  "Holy  Place"  and  the  "  Holy  of  Holies,"  are 
not  separated.  Perhaps  we  cannot  separate  them  or 
draw  a  line  where  one  ends  and  the  other  begins,  for 
as  to  this  very  innermost  mystery,  to  what  extent 
Christ  our  Master  will  choose  to  use  us,  to  come  in 
and  dwell  with  us  and  speak  through  us  in  this  regard, 
we  cannot  dare  to  say.  In  a  sense,  we  have  nothing 
to  do  with  it.  It  is  Christ's  matter.  It  is  here  that  a 
sane  man  would  be  most  upon  his  guard  against  subtle 
forms  of  pride,  of  extravagance,  of  esoteric  fancy. 
What  we  do  need  is  to  train  ourselves  in  the  outer  of 
these  arenas.  Then  when  He  will  He  can  find  us  fit, 
or  let  us  say  a  little  less  unfit,  to  His  hand. 

It  will  perhaps  be  difficult  to  avoid  the  impression 
that,  speaking  in  this  way,  we  have  in  mind  something 
novel,  far-fetched,  perhaps  fantastic  or  unscriptural, 
and  no  doubt,  as  must  be  again  emphasized,  the  door 
opens  here  readily  enough  to  all  sorts  of  mawkish  con- 
ceits and  foolish  fancies,  which  are  the  counterfeits  of 
the  real  scriptural  thing  we  have  in  mind.  But  these 
counterfeits  are  all  of  them  distinguished  by  lack  of  two 


6o  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

things — symmetry  and  scriptural  warrant — as  well  as 
by  the  lack  of  two  other  accompanying  qualities, 
which  are,  I  think,  the  two  salts  of  the  soul, — humor 
and  humility. 

Third. — What  then,  more  particularly,  is  the  re- 
lation of  this  reincarnating  principle  to  the  preacher's 
individuality  and  personal  independence  ?  And  the 
answer  is  perfectly  plain,  though,  as  Pascal  remarks  in 
another  connection — "  We  feel  it  better  than  we  can 
express  it."  Christ's  living  Spirit  surely  respects  the 
free  personality  of  His  minister,  not  substituting  Him- 
self for  us,  nor  in  any  way  suppressing  our  own  indi- 
viduality nor  discarding  its  limitations.  Indeed,  that 
is  not  the  genius  of  incarnation  at  all.  The  true 
genius  of  incarnation  honors  and  even  exalts  the 
individuality  of  the  form  it  chooses.  From  the 
depths  of  the  universal  Christian  faith  emerges  this 
clear  logic,  that  even  as  the  Eternal  God  respected  the 
true  manhood  of  Christ  Jesus,  the  Son  of  Mary,  and 
conformed  Himself  to  the  human  Jesus  in  the  mystery 
of  the  Great  Incarnation,  so  now,  also,  the  Spirit  of 
Christ  does  honor  to  the  mystery  of  free  human  per- 
sonality, recognizes  its  independence,  and  the  applica- 
tion to  it  of  the  natural  laws  of  mind,  while  yet  employ- 
ing this  complex  product  of  free  power  and  natural  law 
as  a  mould,  a  living  body,  into  which  something  of  His 
continued  life  may,  through  His  grace,  flow. 

It  seems  necessary  to  emphasize  this  strongly,  and 
bolt  the  door  against  easy  misconception  at  this  vital 
point,  for  if  any  one  supposes  that  the  endeavor  to 
preach  in  the  light  of  this  truth,  in  the  noble  effort  to 
reembody  as  well  as  to  report  the  gospel  will  result  in 


Preaching  an  Incarnation  61 

the  suppression  of  virile  independence,  will  make 
preachers  echoes  merely  of  the  past,  amiable  dream- 
ers, acolytes  of  a  mystic  cult,  lifted  up  with  a  subtle 
spiritual  pride  instead  of  manly,  secular,  up-to-date 
men,  he  has  mistaken  the  very  idea  of  incarnation ; 
for  the  incarnation  of  God  in  man  is  not  the  substitu- 
tion of  QfO^for  man.  Incarnation  "  comes  forth  into 
the  light  of  things,"  to  use  Wordsworth's  fine  phrase, 
and  maintains  the  integrity  of  the  personal  form  into 
which  the  incarnation  is  made. 

And  this  also  must  be  borne  in  mind,  that  true  in- 
carnation is  an  incarnation  into  the  whole  of  a  man's 
manhood,  not  into  a  segment  of  it.  The  kingdom  of  God 
in  man's  soul,  or  in  the  preacher's  vocation,  knows  no 
fractional  psychology.  God  will  not  discredit  the  stamp 
He  first  put  upon  an  individual  man  by  any  subsequent 
use  He  makes  of  him.  How  curious  it  is  that  Peter 
and  John  were  less  like  each  other,  and  yet  were  each 
of  them  more  like  Christ  at  the  end  of  their  three 
years'  companionship  with  Him  than  at  the  beginning  ? 
The  soldier  whistle  of  that  initial  S  was  not  quite  lost 
in  the  P  when  Saul  became  Paul.  And  the  time 
would  fail  me  to  tell  of  Justin  and  Jerome  and  Chry- 
sostom  and  Columba  far  in  the  West,  and  Savonarola 
and  Luther  and  Knox,  who,  each  and  all,  reembody- 
ing  the  one  spirit  of  their  Master,  found  also  the 
separate  individuality  of  each  mind  called  into  dis- 
tinctive action  in  the  form  suited  to  its  own  environ- 
ment and  time. 

This  scriptural  truth  of  preaching  then,  as  being  in 
some  sense  a  reincarnation  of  Christ  in  the  roused 
and  refined  manhood  and  utterance  of  the  preacher, 


62  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

does  not  take  a  man  one  inch  away  from  actual 
people  and  practical  life,  but,  on  the  contrary,  brings 
us  nearer  to  them.  It  is  an  idea  not  esoteric  or  even 
mystical,  save  in  the  healthy,  legitimate  sense  of  that 
word.  It  does  not  substitute  an  inner  illumination 
for  the  plain,  sane  sense  of  things.  It  is  simply  the 
practical  realization  in  the  field  of  the  ministry  of 
what  we  Christians  all  say  we  believe  as  to  the  divine 
element  in  human  life  and  form.  The  form  must  be 
human,  natural,  red-blooded,  else  that  word  incarnation 
with  the  wonderful  glow  of  live  color  in  its  depths  does 
not  apply. 

All  that  ''piece  of  work"  which  constitutes  the 
man,  the  personal  feature  and  faculty,  the  native 
rhythm  and  march  of  mind,  its  free  energy,  humor, 
gaiety  and  practical  sympathy,  the  whole  full-toned 
orchestra  of  the  human  power,  "  the  primordial  mass 
of  manhood,"  as  Dr.  Stalker  calls  it,  is  not,  in  the 
least,  disowned  or  set  aside  for  something  occult, 
rarified  and  ethereal.  This  is  substitution,  not  in- 
carnation. 

You  cannot,  my  comrades,  feel  half  so  keenly  as  I 
feel,  how  pallid  and  barren  these  words  are  to  suggest 
even  the  content  of  this  great  and  manly  truth  we  are 
invoking.  The  idea  itself  is  really  the  "  eternal  song  " 
of  our  great  vocation;  but  it  is  a  "song  without 
words  "  or  rather  beyond  them.  One  cannot  seem  to 
put  into  words  what  is  tugging  and  struggling  in  his 
heart  to  be  said,  in  front  of  this  wonderful  shrine  of 
our  calling. 

But  I  pray  God  that  this  plain  inadequacy  on  my 
part  may  only  stir  you  up  to  articulate  these  things  for 


Preaching  an  Incarnation  63 

yourselves,  for  you  can  do  this,  and  to  listen  to  the 
deeper  voice  of  your  own  souls.  And  this  would  be 
best  of  all.  For  we  shall  discover  that  our  current 
phrases  about  "bringing  Christ"  into  our  ministry, 
are  not  "vain  imaginings,"  the  ghosts  of  forgotten 
speculations,  but  they  denote  palpitating  realities, 
such  as  send  a  living  thrill  through  all  the  body  and 
soul  of  a  man,  stirring  him  to  his  finger-tips,  reaching 
to  the  most  hidden  cranny  of  his  mind,  kindling  his 
intense  and  chivalrous  passion,  not  only  to  secure  that 
"beauty  of  the  inward  soul"  for  which  Socrates 
prays,  at  the  close  of  the  "Phaedrus,"  but  also  to 
make  himself,  even  to  the  last  filament  of  his  manhood, 
a  white,  true  organ  of  expression,  in  touch  with  Christ 
and  His  truth  on  the  one  hand,  and  with  our  living 
age  on  the  other,  so  that  without  impairing  the  play 
and  power  of  free  personality,  something  of  the  very 
power  of  Christ  may  also,  perchance,  rest  upon 
him. 

Fourth. — But  not  to  lose  ourselves  in  generalities, 
hugging  the  practical  and  aiming  straight  at  our 
target,  let  us,  in  the  fourth  place,  go  still  one  step 
further  along  the  same  road.  For  as  you  have  ob- 
served, we  have  already  come  within  the  border  of  a 
still  further  extension  of  the  law  of  the  incarnation,  as 
applied  to  preaching.  It  is  this: — Not  only  does  the 
preacher  seek  incessantly  to  unify  and  train  himself 
properly  to  embody  as  well  as  to  report  Christ's  truth, 
he  also  in  turn  creates  a  new  form,  selected  from  the 
best  of  the  life  of  the  age  he  lives  in  and  the  mental 
habit  of  the  people  whom  he  addresses  ;  and  into  that 
new  form,  suited  to  the  people,  he  pours  his  sense  of 


64  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

the  ancient  truth,  so  that  it  shall  come  to  the  people  in 
the  phrase  of  the  people. 

The  fine  thing  here  must  be  touched  half  gaily,  else 
it  will  be  touched  mawkishly.  For  one  fancies  that 
precisely  here  is  where  the  subtlest  self-sacrifice  of  the 
preacher  flashes  at  the  finial  into  his  finest  power. 
Here  is  the  preacher's  cross,  but  also  his  crown.  For 
you  of  course  perceive  how  often  at  this  point  the 
preacher  must  "cease  from  himself,"  set  aside  his  own 
selfishly  preferred  form  of  expression  and  choose  one 
caught  up  from  the  people.  Without  this  our  spiritual 
intensities  may  go  over  the  heads  of  actual  men,  and 
even  seem  to  remove  us  from  them.  One  can  imagine 
himself  growing  so  flamingly  intense  and  lifted  up  as 
to  lose  humor  and  proportion,  and  so  really  to  lessen 
actual  fellowship  with  what  in  its  cooler  mood  the 
congregation  is  thinking  about  and  feeling.  A  preacher 
may  be  so  keyed  up  and  spiritually  exalted  that  with- 
out knowing  it  he  becomes  unpractical,  unnatural, 
ungenial,  stilted,  overstrained.  Through  all  this 
plays  also  a  kind  of  latent  spiritual  pride. 

The  corrective  against  this  subtle  peril  of  high 
spiritual  passion  is  to  realize  the  true  genius  of  the 
incarnation  by  which,  with  a  certain  profound  and 
delicate  spiritual  self-denial,  the  man  comes  down 
from  his  high  places,  takes  the  distilled  essence  of  his 
own  spiritual  excitement,  and  pours  it  into  the  flasks 
of  every-day,  commonplace  sympathies  and  expres- 
sions derived  from  the  people. 

But  you  will  also  perceive  that  the  law  of  incar- 
nation requires  the  preacher  to  select  for  this  purpose 
the  best  forms  of  the  people's  life  and  thought.     He 


Preaching  an  Incarnation  65 

must  pick  out  the  choicest  factors  of  the  new  time, 
the  finest  habits  of  mental  movement,  the  kindliest 
sympathies  germane  to  the  people  in  front  of  him. 
These  he  must  combine,  and  in  that  finest  selection 
from  the  environment  he  must  express  his  thought 
and,  as  we  have  seen,  endeavor  to  reincarnate,  as 
God  may  give  him  grace,  the  "  truth  as  it  was  in 
Jesus." 

And  so  we  come  in  sight  of  the  entire  scheme  and 
march  of  the  student's  thought  upon  this  subject, 
how  the  philosophy  of  noble  art  in  preaching  shades 
up,  or  rather  brightens  up,  into  the  philosophy  of  the 
incarnation  itself,  and  how  this  in  turn  leads  us 
straight  on  to  employ  what  is  truest  and  newest  in 
our  modern  time.  This  will  be  our  special  theme  in 
the  following  lecture. 

0  my  associates,  is  it  not  a  thrilling  thing  to  preach, 
or  even  to  try  to  preach  and  fail,  in  the  glory  of  such  an 
idea  of  preaching  as  this,  wi-th  Christ  behind  us,  so 
near  that  He  can  touch  us,  and  with  the  living  men 
of  to-day  in  front  of  us,  so  near  that  we  can  touch 
them ! 

1  recall  one  very  remarkable  sentence  of  Scripture 
which  has  come  down  to  us  in  one  of  the  great  un- 
contested Epistles  of  St.  Paul,  the  second  to  the 
Corinthians,  which  in  an  almost  startling  fashion  pre- 
sents both  wings  of  this  dual  process.  The  sentence 
is  this: — "For  we  preach  not  ourselves  but  Christ 
Jesus,  as  Lord."  This  is  the  first  half  of  the  sentence. 
Here  is  presented  the  notion  of  the  incarnation  of 
Christ's  spirit  in  the  form  of  the  personal  effort  and 
energy  of  the  minister.     Now  read  on — ''And  our- 


66  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

selves  as  your  servants,  for  Jesus'  sake" — the  min- 
ister's reembodiment  of  this  same  spirit  in  the  dialect 
of  the  people,  for  that  is  the  undertone  of  the  idea. 
In  a  superficial  sense  Paul  contradicts  himself :  in  a 
deeper  sense  he  does  not.  In  one  breath  Paul  de- 
clares that  we  do  not  preach  ourselves,  and  yet  do 
preach  ourselves  ;  but  it  is  only  as  "  servants  "  of  the 
people,  and  yet  Christ  is  in  all  the  process — "  for 
Jesus'  sake." 

Midway,  then,  we  stand, — God  help  us  to  stand 
there  humbly  and  largely — between  Christ  and  the 
people,  between  the  white  shrine  and  the  leaping 
flame,  true  to  the  one,  fair  to  the  other,  while  the  law 
of  the  incarnation,  "  the  spirit  of  life  in  Christ  Jesus," 
pervades  all,  first  from  Christ  to  His  minister,  then 
from  that  minister  to  men. 

"The  dignity  of  truth,"  as  old  Ben  Jonson  said, 
"is  lost  with  much  protesting."  And  we  rein  our- 
selves back  from  overstatement,  but  we  cannot  help 
feeling  that  here  is  unrolled  before  us  the  magnificent 
rationality  and  breadth  of  the  true  conception  of 
preaching. 

It  is  this  dual  harmony  in  ministerial  culture, 
which  we  are  perhaps  in  danger  of  missing  the 
true  authority  for,  which  constitutes  the  peculiar 
enthusiasm  of  our  calling.  In  the  one  direction  we 
"see  Jesus."  With  the  mind's  eye,  illuminated  still 
further  by  Christ's  Holy  Spirit  of  promise,  again  we 
behold  that  dear  Syrian  face.  His  voice  again  is  on 
the  air,  His  touch  is  on  our  souls,  His  truth  seeks 
reembodiment  in  all  our  manhood ;  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  all  that  we  have  within  us  that  is  nimblest, 


Preaching  an  Incarnation  67 

bravest,  most  intelligent  rushes  forth  into  the  new  age, 
to  understand  it,  to  grasp  it,  to  affiliate  with  the  best 
in  it,  to  make  it  a  new  shrine  of  Christ,  a  new  temple 
of  God.  The  whole  battalion  of  the  time  is  thus 
marching  for  us  preachers.  All  its  splendid  and 
varied  materials,  its  surpassing  jets  of  power,  crowd 
up  to  our  hand,  to  be  utilized  and  in  a  sense  in- 
corporated in  our  work.  What  a  thing  it  is  to  be  a 
preacher  to-day ! 

Fifth,  and  finally. — We  are  led  by  this  line 
of  discussion,  in  which  generals  rather  than  particu- 
lars have  been  considered,  (with  the  result  of  making 
the  lecture  explicitly  monotonous,  but  that  you  must 
please  forgive)  directly  to  three  groups  of  practical 
inferences. 

I  St.  A  new  and  commanding  accent  falls  upon  the 
minister's  self-culture;  for  what  stirs  him  is  the  new 
idea  of  cultivating  not  his  ministerial  self  alone,  but 
his  whole  self  to  be  his  ministerial  self,  in  the  humble 
eifort  to  become,  so  far  as  God  will,  Christ's  organ  of 
speech  to  living  men. 

Now  the  power  of  this  thought  is  that  it  immensely 
enlarges  the  range  of  resources  which  one  is  impelled  to 
use  in  preaching.  It  induces  what  is  more  important 
than  anything  else  for  the  preacher, — a  certain  constant 
energy  and  exhilaration  in  his  way  of  thinking  and 
acting,  in  reference  to  his  work.  With  his  one  great 
end  in  view,  he  will  make  of  his  body,  for  example, 
the  finest  and  most  facile  body  possible.  Of  course 
he  cannot,  unless  he  be  a  man  of  more  than  average 
stature,  produce  the  impression  which  Sidney  Smith 
said  that  Daniel  Webster  made  upon  him — that  the 


68  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

great  American  was  "  a  locomotive  in  trousers," — but 
he  can  insist  with  himself  that  his  body  shall  take  the 
accent  of  the  gentleman  in  all  personal  niceties,  and 
he  will  drill  and  hammer  that  body  until  it  obeys  him. 
He  will  not  allow  his  casual  mood  to  have  its  way. 
He  will  drive  with  a  tight  rein.  He  can  and  he  will 
deny  himself  those  trivial  personal  indulgences  which 
dissipate  energy  and  weaken  will.  And  he  will  re- 
member what  the  accomplished  President  of  Dart- 
mouth put  so  aptly  in  his  Yale  Lectures  on  Preaching, 
that  for  the  preacher  "  the  subtle  refinement  of  lazi- 
ness is  the  postponement  of  the  hard  and  exacting 
duty  beyond  the  one  which  is  easier  and  more  agree- 
able." He  will  smite  at  all  "blue  devils."  He  will 
keep  himself  strung  and  sunny.  He  will  "  down  "  all 
petulance,  throttle  all  jealousy.  He  will  laugh  cyni- 
cism out  of  court.  He  will  even  refrain  from  gossip 
"  as  much  as  heth  in  him."  He  will  ridicule  himself 
out  of  his  own  self-conceit,  avoid  flippancy,  and  espe- 
cially watch  and  guard  against  that  negligence  in 
spare  hours  which  so  easily  ravels  down  into  acrid  or 
effeminate  or  apathetic  or  gloomy  tempers. 

Then,  in  the  realm  of  the  intellect.  He  will  not  be 
contented  with  the  French  mot,  that  "the  fragments 
of  the  intellect  are  always  good."  ^  He  will  cultivate 
especially  that  generic  intellectual  habit,  wherein  is 
justice,  breadth,  swift  movement.  He  Avill  train  his 
mind  to  think  of  things  in  Christ's  way.  He  will 
endeavor  to  realize  in  his  own  intellectual  life  Christ's 
way  of  regarding  God,  the  world,  the  soul. 

Then,  deepest  of  all,  in  the  realm  of  the  spirit,  he 

1 "  Handsome  Lawrence,"  George  Sand. 


Preaching  an  Incarnation  69 

will  strive  with  a  great  striving  that  he  may  winnow 
his  soul  free  of  what  would  obstruct  the  natural  play 
through  him  of  the  mind  of  his  Lord,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  he  opens  every  window  into  the  actual  life  of 
men  around  him.  For  the  sake  of  others,  he  "sanc- 
tifies himself"  as  his  Master  did,  so  that  at  the  end  of 
years  and  years  of  this  symmetrical  self-disciplining  of 
body,  brain,  and  spirit,  all  together  and  all  in  one,  he 
can  find  himself  one  glowing  unit  of  force,  not  all  un- 
ready for  the  Master's  hand. 

Now,  it  is  nothing  less  than  marvellous  how  this 
personal  training  transforms  itself  into  a  professional 
power  as  far  from  self-conceit  as  it  is  from  cowardice. 
In  default  of  special  talent  even,  a  man  who  fills  him- 
self with  these  splendid  ideals  as  to  the  relation  of 
personal  manhood  to  preaching,  and  maintains  him- 
self in  this  attitude  of  the  inner  spirit,  will,  at  length, 
come  to  surpass,  in  all  the  higher  efficiency  of  his 
work,  the  man  who  possesses  talent  with  less  of  moral 
enthusiasm,  for  back  of  the  former  of  the  two  men  is 
the  very  Genius  of  the  Incarnation,  inspiring  and  sup- 
porting him. 

2d.  Then  a  second  practical  inference  from  our 
general  line  of  thought  also  follows.  We  find  our- 
selves in  a.  new  and  advantageous  position  with  regard 
to  the  critical  discussions  of  the  hour.  The  "  Higher 
Criticism"  is  best  studied  from  above,  from  the  table- 
lands of  spiritual  aspiration.  We  retain  that  larger 
perspective  of  thought  and  of  faith  which  the  detail  of 
current  criticism  is  under  some  risk  of  losing.  Breth- 
ren, some  things  are  not  of  so  much  consequence  as 
other  things  are,  an  axiom  which  might  be  written 


70  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

upon  the  door  of  the  minister's  study  and  even  pos- 
sibly in  theological  halls. 

No  mistake,  however,  is  more  serious  than  to  belit- 
tle current  discussion,  for  in  our  age  also,  as  truly  as 
in  any  former  age,  the  Spirit  of  God  is  moving,  and 
is  moving  through  the  agency  of  this  very  discussion 
and  criticism  itself. 

Yet,  when  we  put  the  preacher's  work  into  these 
large  categories  which  we  have  ventured  to  entitle 
those  of  art  and  incarnation,  we  are  introduced,  I  am 
sure,  into  a  region  above  and  beyond  many  of  the 
critical  cleavages.  The  effort  to  embody  in  the  forms 
of  a  finished  and  noble  art  something  of  the  spirit  of 
Christ,  for  the  sake  of  the  rescue  of  men  and  the 
spiritual  enfranchisement  of  modern  society,  is  an  er- 
rand so  large  that  a  preacher  finds  himself  in  practical 
sympathy  with  what  is  good  on  both  sides  of  cotem- 
porary  controversy.  He  sees  the  seamless  overarch 
of  the  one  sky  above  "conservative"  and  "liberal." 
He  feels  the  granite  continuity  of  the  one  world  be- 
neath the  level  to  which  the  cleavage  runs,  and  there- 
fore he  is  Christ's  freeman,  and  every  man's  brother 
in  the  tossing  time.  Not  that  he  will  be  a  trimmer, 
or  a  neutral.  He  will  have  clear  convictions,  decided 
opinions  perhaps  on  points  of  issue ;  but  no  man  can 
tether  him  or  label  him  as  a  partisan.  His  preaching 
will  somehow  make  men  feel  that  the  important  things 
are  both  nearer  and  surer  than  the  points  of  con- 
troversy. 

And  more  than  this.  In  this  swift  march  the 
preacher  finds  himself  in  the  way  of  the  practical 
settlement  for  himself  of  many  vexed  questions  which 


Preaching  an  Incarnation  71 

are  baffling,  perhaps  paralyzing,  so  long  as  he  sits 
alone  in  the  chill  of  the  merely  critical  mood.  It  is 
easy  to  find  that  cold  chair  of  hesitant  intellectual 
misgiving.     Quit  it. 

We  work  ourselves  out  of  intellectual  perplexity 
by  working  up  into  the  larger  vision  that  commands 
both  sides  of  mooted  questions,  as  the  cragsman 
emerges  from  valley  mists  while  he  climbs  to  the  sunny 
terraces  of  the  upper  mountains.  The  endeavor  to 
reembody  the  old  message  in  the  new  time  gives  to 
the  preacher  a  new  principle  of  discrimination,  a 
new  secret  of  reconciliation  and  adjustment,  and  he 
gains,  both  for  himself  and  for  his  people,  new 
insight,  new  freedom,  new  mastery  in  all  the  critical 
field. 

3d.  Then,  third  and  last  of  these  practical  con- 
clusions, we  discover  an  answer  to  certain  of  your 
forty-four  questions.  "Thou  sayest  an  undisputed 
thing  in  such  a  solemn  way,"  said  our  genial  Dr. 
Holmes,  I  suspect  with  a  shrewd  eye  to  us  ministers. 
Accordingly,  your  salvation,  gentlemen,  from  the 
didactic  monotone  of  these  lectures,  is  in  your  own 
straight  rifle-shot  questions.  How  swiftly  they  ride 
ahead  of  us  along  our  track !  Some  of  these  ques- 
tions however  are  simply  unanswerable  if  we  remain 
on  the  lower  professional  levels,  but  on  this  higher 
level  of  realizing  what  the  genius  of  the  incarna- 
tion is,  as  related  to  our  vocation,  we  attain  a 
certain  point  of  vantage,  a  certain  kindled  glow  of 
mind  and  life,  in  which  the  questions  answer  them- 
selves. 

Take  that  tremendous  question,  for  example,  num- 


72  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

ber  32 — "What  are  the  certainties  of  truth  which 
will  be  most  effective  with  a  congregation?"  What 
a  question  that  is  !  How  every  man  of  us  feels  the 
instant  weight  of  it !  You  know  the  conventional 
current  answer.  It  is  that  the  "  Christological " 
order  of  truth  is  the  most  effective  in  preaching. 
Yet  this  answer  seems  somehow  tame  and  theoretic. 
But  our  point  of  view  to-day  gives  us  a  different  con- 
ception of  the  whole  matter,  for  the  Christological 
order,  what  is  it  ?  It  is  not  the  mere  common  idea  of 
preaching  chiefly  about  Christ.  That  is  part  of  it. 
But  the  Christological  order  is  the  order  of  divine 
truth  as  it  lay  in  Christ's  mind.  That  translated 
into  the  preacher's  mind  and  again  retranslated  by 
him  into  the  mental  dialect  of  the  people  of  the  time, 
is  the  effective  order.  Preach  most  what  Christ 
thought  about  most,  what  He  makes  you  think  about 
most,  what  you  can  make  people  think  about  most — 
those  three  in  one.  Preach  God  in  Christ's  way. 
Preach  moral  ideals  with  Christ's  accent.  It  is  this 
cadence  of  Christ  which  is  the  effective  thing — this 
exquisite  rational  grace  in  the  tone  of  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount,  for  example,  or  in  those  final  syllables  in 
the  "  upper  room." 

Or,  take  that  other  question,  number  Tfi,  only 
second  in  importance — "What  are  the  qualities  to 
rate  highest  in  taking  inventory  of  our  own  resources?  " 
And  the  answer  is  equally  direct  and  unconventional. 
Those  qualities  are  best  that  best  take  the  stamp  of 
the  incarnating  principle  in  its  dual  operation.  Those 
qualities  of  mind  and  heart  stand  first  for  a  preacher 
which  most  readily  apprehend  and  affiliate  with  Christ 


Preaching  an  Incarnation  73 

on  the  one  hand,  and  with  humanity  on  the  other. 
We  should  cultivate,  for  example,  that  side  of  the  in- 
tellect which  lies  towards  sympathy,  that  side  of  the 
imagination  that  lies  towards  reverence,  that  side  of 
the  orator's  passion  which  lies  towards  sincerity,  sim- 
plicity, humility. 

And  then  question  25 — "  Shall  one  put  personal 
experience  into  sermonic  form?  "  Yes,  certainly,  but 
not  in  the  crude,  conceited  way  of  turning  autobiog- 
rapher  every  Sunday.  Few  ministers  can  stand  that, 
and  still  fewer  congregations  can.  It  is  apt  to  beget 
a  certain  coolness — a  "glacial  epoch" — between  pul- 
pit and  pew.  The  true  way  to  use  one's  own  personal 
experience  is  as  an  interpreter  between  Christ's  truth 
and  the  people' s  experience.  People  are  more  inter- 
ested in  their  own  experience  than  in  yours.  We 
really  are  most  finely  using  ourselves  when  we  "cease 
from  ourselves."  Perhaps  on  the  larger  scale  we  are 
never  more  really  "succeeding,"  or  being  more  truly 
aided  by  the  "Spirit  of  Truth  and  of  Grace"  than 
when  we  are  seeming  to  ourselves  more  than  half  to 
"fail." 

Thus  also  question  26  is  answered — "  How  can  a 
man  find  the  common  ground  between  himself  and  the 
congregation?"  The  answer  is — by  rising  to  a  new 
and  higher  level.  If  the  preacher  is  "alive"  in  the 
sense  we  have  tried  to  define,  then  the  essential  human 
truth  and  tone  of  Christ,  caught  up  by  the  preacher, 
is  so  reproduced  through  him  as  to  reach  the  answer- 
ing chord  in  the  people.  The  high  ground  is  the 
common  ground. 

Last  of  all,  our  principle  corresponds  with  that 


74  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

strong  note  in  question  27.  I  can  imagine  the  deep 
place  in  the  writer's  mind  out  of  which  that  question 
came.  "  How  shall  a  man  sink  out  of  sight  so  that 
men  shall  feel  that  they  are  not  spectators  of  a  human 
performance,  but  listeners  to  a  divine  message?  " 

In  an  obtrusive  or  self-seeking  sense,  the  preacher 
does  "sink  out  of  sight."  But  he  does  not  try  to 
sink.  There  is  no  unmanly  gasp  of  mechanical  self- 
abasement.  He  is  hurrying  with  Christ's  torch  to 
men's  dark  homes,  and  he  is  too  eager  about  the 
torch  to  think  or  to  care  what  his  own  pose  is. 
Striving  so  far  as  his  uttermost  faculty  may  to  reem- 
body  the  spirit  of  his  Lord,  and  on  the  other  hand 
setting  aside  his  own  mere  fancies  of  style  and  pour- 
ing his  very  soul  into  the  flasks  of  form  furnished  by 
the  best  mental  habit  of  the  people  in  front  of  him  and 
of  the  age  around  him,  he  does  efface  himself,  but  it 
is  by  making  himself  the  finest  possible  man,  as  the 
perfect  lens  itself  is  not  seen  through  which  the  eye 
looks  at  the  star. 

The  man  is  thus  protected  against  many  of  the 
worst  dangers  of  our  calling,  which  have  been  the 
sources  of  weakness  to  the  ministry  and  discredit  to 
the  Church.  He  is  protected  against  mawkishness, 
against  fanaticism,  against  vainglory  and  spiritual 
pride,  against  barren  scholasticism,  against  demagog- 
nism  under  the  mask  of  evangelistic  zeal,  against 
esoteric  pietism.  On  the  contrary,  he  is  reasonable, 
sympathetic,  true,  a  good  fellow,  a  sensible,  healthy 
comrade.  He  is  of  the  people,  as  his  Master  was. 
But  within  it  all,  he  is  a  man  on  fire  with  the  un- 
matched  passion   of  his   great   calling,   from   which 


Preaching  an  Incarnation  75 

sprang  the  old,  fervid  words,  so  long  ago  written 
down  by  a  master  hand — "As  though  God  7vere  en- 
treating by  us.  We  beseech  you  on  behalf  of  Christ, 
be  ye  reconciled  to  God." 


LECTURE  IV 

THE  NEW  AGE  AND  ITS  RELATION  TO 
PREACHING 


LECTURE  IV 
THE  NEW  AGE  AND  ITS  RELATION  TO  PREACHING 

Nothing  could  be  further  from  the  simple  path  of 
inquiry  purposed  in  these  lectures,  than  to  enter  upon 
the  endeavor  to  describe  and  analyze  at  length  the 
significant  factors  and  forces  of  our  "New  Age,"  as 
we  not  incorrectly  term  it.  Your  own  minds,  as  dis- 
closed in  your  forty-four  questions,  are  themselves 
products  of  this  new  age,  and  are  alive  to  its  charac- 
teristic note. 

Our  one  object  now  is  to  ask  how  the  line  of  argu- 
ment thus  far  pursued  relates  itself  to  this  character- 
istic note  of  the  modern  time.  That  line  of  argu- 
ment briefly  recalled  is  as  follows  : 

Preaching  is  first  a  noble  art  of  public  speech,  by 
which,  setting  forth  Christian  truth  in  gracious  forms, 
the  preacher  brings  his  subject,  himself  and  his  con- 
gregation into  moral  harmony,  and  so  wins  the  mind. 
But  beyond  this,  preaching  is  also  an  incarnation,  and 
nothing  short  of  that,  a  reincarnation,  under  human 
limitations,  of  the  "Mind  of  Christ" — a  reembodi- 
ment,  to  some  extent,  of  the  Spirit  of  the  Great  In- 
carnation in  Christ  Jesus,  in  which  art,  though  still 
present,  ceases  to  be  self-conscious,  and  in  which  the 
preacher,  with  every  kindled  faculty,  seeks  to  train  his 
manhood  in  its  entirety  into  one  finished  organ  of 
expression,  so  as  to  represent,  as  well  as  to  report, 
79 


8o  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

something  of  the  message  of  his  Master,  and  so  that 
even  possibly  that  Master  Himself,  in  the  mystery 
of  His  living  presence,  shall  find  His  servant  not 
unready  to  His  use,  as  the  humble  exponent  of  His 
Spirit  speaking  to  men. 

But  the  logic  of  all  this  leads  the  preacher  still 
further,  namely,  into  the  incessant  and  resolute  en- 
deavor to  select  from  the  finest  factors  of  the  present 
age,  and  the  noblest  mental  habit  of  the  men  whom 
he  addresses,  a  yet  fresher  form  or  mould  of  incarna- 
ting expression,  a  model  of  utterance,  a  manner  of 
action,  best  suited  to  men  to-day,  into  which,  without 
loss,  he  may  pour  the  vital  essence  of  the  ancient 
truth. 

The  natural  and  easy  criticism  upon  all  this  line  of 
thought  is,  of  course,  that  it  is  mystical  and  runs  off 
into  mere  transcendentalism  ;  and  it  may  be  acknowl- 
edged that  our  path  does  lie  along  close  to  such  a 
gulf  of  misty  vagaries,  from  which  the  true  idea  must 
be  carefully  discriminated. 

But  we  have  now  reached  a  point  in  the  discussion 
where  the  general  conception  of  preaching  which  we 
have  sought  to  develop  and  which  pervades  your 
initial  questions,  can  be  put  to  final  and  practical 
test.  If  that  conception  fails  to  stand  the  fire  of  actual 
demand  to-day,  if  it  fails  to  connect  itself,  readily, 
naturally,  vitally,  with  the  specific  practical  problems 
of  the  modern  age,  it  must  be  set  aside. 

I  believe,  however,  that  this  modern  note  involves 
no  substantial  change  in  our  point  of  view  or  our  line 
of  reasoning,  namely,  that  which  regards  preaching  as 
a  practical  art,  leading  up  into  a  spiritual  incarnation. 


Relation  of  the  New  Age  to  Preaching    81 

On  the  contrary,  at  this  very  point  such  a  conception 
most  evinces  its  rational  practicaHty  and  spiritual 
power. 

This  brings  us  then,  in  thought,  fairly  witliin  the 
gates  of  the  new  age,  in  the  midst  of  an  arena  as 
bewildering  as  it  is  stimulating,  and  we  ask,  with  a 
sort  of  excited  misgiving,  how  can  we  carry  out  any 
such  lofty  ideal  of  our  calling  amid  the  toss  and  rush 
of  the  modern  era  ?  What  are  these  factors  which  the 
minister  can  choose  and  use  from  the  time  and  in  the 
time  and  for  the  time  ?  What  sentiments  in  our  age 
are  best  for  the  minister  to  single  out,  correlate  and 
combine  into  a  new  instrument  of  form  through  which 
the  law  and  genius  of  the  Incarnation  bid  him  speak  ? 

May  I  mention  briefly  four  of  these  factors,  which 
are  perhaps  of  chief  importance  to  the  preacher? 
They  are  those  which  lie  plainest  upon  the  face  of 
things,  involving  no  recondite  analysis  in  order  to  dis- 
cern them ;  and  they  are  those  which  your  own  ques- 
tions emphasize. 

Question  No.  28,  for  example — "  Can  you  give  us 
a  relief  picture  of  the  arena  in  which  we  are  to  have 
our  task  ?  ' ' 

No.  29 — "What  I  want  is  something  objective,  a 
clear  analysis  of  the  conditions  of  society?  " 

No.  39 — "  What  I  want  is  knowledge  of  the  field 
from  a  man  who  has  been  there,"  (and  escaped  alive  ! 
— though  you  did  not  say  that). 

The  four  features  of  our  time  most  important  for 
present  consideration  appear  to  be  :  — 

I.  The  spirit  of  scientific  investigation  and  criti- 
cism ; 


'^ 


82  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

2.  The  spirit  of  social  combination  ; 

3.  The  spirit  of  economic  enterprise  ; 

4.  The  spirit  of  the  new  philanthropy,  by  which  I 
mean  the  philanthropy  which  seeks  to  deal  intelli- 
gently with  causes  of  misery,  as  well  as  with  misery 
itself. 

These  four,  if  I  mistake  not,  are  vitally  inter-re- 
lated, leading  up  one  from  another,  like  a  terrace  with 
four  steps. 

I  shall  not  quarrel,  of  course,  with  the  man  who 
affirms  that  on  each  of  these  four  levels  we  find  our- 
selves confronted  by  an  intellectual  medley — "an 
orgie  of  thought,"  to  recall  a  phrase  of  Amiel  written 
thirty  years  ago, — an  imposing  but  heterogeneous 
mixture  of  good  and  evil  elements ;  but  I  maintain 
that  the  central  idea  in  each  of  these  four  modern 
movements  is  of  God,  and  offers  itself  most  nobly  to 
the  preacher's  hand. 

/  "  This  world's  no  blot  for  us, 

/  Nor  blank ;  it  means  intensity  and  means  good," 

ist. — Take,  first,  if  you  please,  our  uncompromising 
friend,  the  spirit  of  scientific  criticism.  I  need  not 
delay  upon  any  labored  restatement  of  this  modern 
temper.  It  is  the  breath  of  all  our  breathing.  Our 
object  at  the  moment  is  simply  to  ask,  how  shall  the 
true  preacher  of  Christ  who,  in  the  spirit  of  a  noble 
art,  seeks  also  to  reincarnate  the  gospel  message  in  the 
finest  forms  of  the  current  age,  adjust  his  preaching  to 
the  demands  of  this  critical  spirit  ?  In  the  field  of 
Biblical  criticism,  for  example,  where  shall  he  set  up 
his  pulpit?     The  answer  which  our  logic  gives  us  is 


Relation  of  the  New  Age  to  Preaching    83 

perfectly  plain.  The  true  scientific  temper  is  essen- 
tially rational  and  right.  It  is  of  God  and  leads  to 
God.  The  preacher,  therefore,  should  keep  himself 
in  sympathy  with  the  generic  spirit  of  modern  criti- 
cism, while  holding  at  easy  arm's  length  certain  alleged 
results  of  that  criticism.  Criticism  is  "  Higher  "  if  it 
leads  us  higher.  Critical  verdicts  are,  many  of  them, 
tentative,  and  preaching  should  not  often  be  tenta- 
tive. Nor  do  these  verdicts  change  the  heart  of  the 
gospel ;  and  preaching  must  always  be  of  the  heart  of 
the  gospel.  But  on  the  other  hand,  the  believer  in 
God  and  in  His  '  *  firm  path  through  the  stream  of 
ages"  must  dare  to  take  distinctly  this  point  of  view, 
even  in  the  pulpit,  namely,  that  the  great  critical 
movement  in  modern  thought  reveals  the  breathing  of 
the  Spirit  of  God  upon  the  intellect  of  man  and  is  to 
be  rejoiced  in  and  honored.  Criticism  is  a  phase  of 
faith. 

The  accomplished  author  of  "The  Gospel  for  an 
Age  of  Doubt"  will  forgive  our  query,  whether  even 
more  than  an  "  age  of  doubt "  this  age  be  not  one  of 
struggle  against  doubt  in  the  interest  of  the  finer  faith 
and  the  nobler  spirituality.  Not  alien  from  our  time 
is  the  Spirit  of  Him  who  said, — "  Ye  shall  know  the 
truth  and  the  truth  shall  make  you  free." 

The  spirit  of  this  age  never  stops  with  doubt.  It  is 
impatient  with  doubt.  It  hurries  to  its  lens  and  its 
drill  that  it  may  dispel  doubt  and  supplant  misgiving 
by  certainty.  Critical  investigation  is  a  mark  not  of 
doubt  but  of  faith,  in  battle.  It  is  "  the  removing  of 
those  things  that  are  shaken,  as  of  things  that  have 
been  made,  that'^   (the  force  of  the  sentence  is  in  the 


84  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

conjunction)  "those  things  whicli  are  not  shaken  may 
remain."  An  age  of  power  can  never  be  predomi- 
nantly an  age  of  doubt. 

The  intellectual  undertone  of  our  time  is  not  that  of 
relish  for  doubt,  but  that  of  hunger  for  truth,  and  this 
hunger  is  of  God. 

The  long  misunderstood,  foolishly  discredited  doc- 
trine of  "evolution,"  for  example,  to  use  the  current 
general  title,  as  describing  one  of  the  methods  of  the 
divine  operation,  is  logically  the  parent  of  the  new 
conservatism,  as  well  as  of  the  new  criticism.  It 
agrees  with  true  Theism  in  its  doctrine  of  the  im- 
manence of  God  in  the  process  of  human  history  and 
the  development  of  the  human  mind,  and  it  agrees 
also  with  that  more  special  Christian  doctrine  of  the 
continued  spiritual  presence  of  Christ  with  His  true 
Church, — a  doctrine  with  the  renaissance  of  which 
the  new  century  is  opening  and  which  is  now  the 
enthusiasm  of  many  Christian  souls.  We  are  living 
in  the  restoration  of  the  Christological  perspective, 
and  criticism  is  contributing  to  this  restoration. 

Any  sane  preacher  will  be  on  his  guard  here,  of 
course,  to  avoid  that  vague  and  hazy  half  materialistic 
pantheism  which  is  the  subtle  counterfeit  of  the  thing 
we  are  talking  about.  But  we  shall  not  be  so  afraid 
of  counterfeits  as  to  refuse  true  gold. 

Christian  scholarship  rejoices  in  the  deepening 
certainty  that  the  philosophy  of  evolution  contains  a 
true  apprehension  of  one  way  of  the  divine  working, 
and  that  rightly  stated  it  is,  so  far  as  it  goes,  the 
strongest  intellectual  ally  yet  discovered  to  the  early 
spiritual   intuitions  of  Christian  faith.     It  proclaims 


Relation  of  the  New  Age  to  Preaching    85 

the  survival  of  the  fittest,  and,  therefore,  turning  the 
argument  around,  the  fitness  of  that,  which,  after  the 
testing  of  fair  fight,  survives,  is  so  far  forth  demon- 
strated. According  to  this,  real  orthodoxy  can  never 
become  obsolete,  but  is  always  rational.  Reason  and 
faith  join  hands  to  proclaim  that  the  God  of  the  old 
times  is  the  God  of  the  new  times  ;  that  if  Christ's 
Spirit  was  immanent  in  the  Church  as  a  living  power 
in  the  first  century  or  the  fourth  or  the  sixteenth,  it  is 
not  less  immanent  in  the  Christendom  of  the  twen- 
tieth— that  the  social  movements  and  tumults  of  to- 
day are  the  very  waves  upon  which  the  Master's  feet 
come  walking. 

This  is  a  familiar  note  in  these  halls.  Surely  with- 
out any  approach  to  what  might  seem  cheap  in  com- 
pliment or  invidious  in  comparison,  I  may  express  the 
common  debt  of  Christian  scholarship,  and  especially 
of  our  Congregational  churches,  to  this  institution  and 
to  its  honored  President,  for  the  distinct  and  fearless 
proclamation  of  the  living  truth  that  modern  Sociology 
is  in  large  measure  Christology  in  the  application  ;  that 
the  laws  of  social  evolution  are  laws  of  the  advancing 
Kingdom  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 

New  discoveries,  ideals,  achievements  are  more  old 
than  they  are  new.  They  are  fresh  phases  of  one 
continuing  Divine  Kingdom.  There  is  no  "listless 
ripple  of  oblivion,"  to  echo  Stephen  Phillips'  over- 
labored "Greek  phrase,"  and  "Christ"  is  not  "in 
Hades."  The  special  rhythm  of  mental  life  is  new, 
but  in  it — in  the  present  union  of  a  critical  intellectual 
temper  with  a  devoted  altruism,  we  are  to  find  not  only 
the  mark  of  Christ  upon  the  age,  but  a  kind  of  resur- 


86  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

rection  of  Christ  Himself, — His  sweet  sanity,  His 
"grace  and  truth." 

Now  let  us  apply  this.  Take  that  group  of  our 
questions,  numbers  7,  8,  9  and  10,  concerning  the 
preacher's  discussion  of  Higher  Criticism.  Shall  he 
seek  such  discussion  or  shun  it?  Neither,  for  the 
most  part.  But  when  he  does  speak,  let  the  discus- 
sion be  both  fearless  and  fair.  Let  the  final  impres- 
sion be  always  one  of  intellectual  justice,  mingled 
with  unshaken  faith.  The  desirable  thing  is  critical 
insight,  together  with  spiritual  enthusiasm.  A  sermon 
should  never  close  leaving  the  weight  of  emphasis  on 
the  doubt. 

Suppose,  preaching  from  Isaiah,  the  preacher  occu- 
pies the  first  third  of  a  given  sermon  with  a  fair,  large, 
non-technical,  non-partisan  account  of  the  question  as 
to  the  composite  authorship  of  the  great  book.  But 
if,  then,  during  the  remaining  two-thirds  of  that  ser- 
mon he  makes  the  moments  weighty  with  the  moral 
and  religious  truths  which  God  has  revealed  on  those 
stately  pages,  whether  by  one  or  by  all  the  Isaiahs, 
what  will  the  people  say?  They  will  say,  'That  is 
right ;  that  strikes  the  true  chord  ;  that  gives  the  true 
intellectual  and  moral  perspective.  Such  preaching 
presents  the  old  time  and  the  new  time  together,  the 
old  truth  in  the  reincarnation  of  the  current  age.' 

What  is  the  preacher's  twentieth  century?  It  is 
the  whole  age  just  as  it  is,  but  ificluding  Christ. 
"f  Precisely  as  Christianity  illustrated  its  intellectual  and 
cosmopolitan  genius  by  adopting  the  Greek  language 
in  the  early  centuries  as  its  fit  and  facile  organ  of  ex- 
pression,  so    now  the    same    Christianity  adopts   the 


Relation  of  the  New  Age  to  Preaching    87 

scientific  spirit,  which  is  the  Greek  language  of  the 
modern  time,  as  the  equally  appropriate  channel  for 
its  expression  to-day. 

Science  leads  us  to  Nature,  and  Nature  leads  us  to 
the  Son  of  Mary,  and  then  stands  silent.  Jesus  said, 
"Consider  the  lilies,"  and  science  obeys  Him.  The 
finest  spirit  of  science  is  profoundly  in  harmony  with 
the  spirit  of  Christianity  as  disclosing  in  human  form 
an  incarnation  of  God. 

Debate  is  necessary  ;  it  always  has  been  necessary. 
The  history  of  doctrine  attests  the  survival  of  the 
fittest  through  antagonism  in  the  realm  of  thought. 
The  best  statements  of  Christian  truth  have  always 
been  evolved  through  free  and  often  fiery  discussion. 
"I  come  not  to  send  peace"  but  an  intellectual 
"sword,"  is  the  spirit  of  Christ's  maxim; — but  at 
bottom,  the  preacher's  truth  is  this,  that  it  is  the  Life 
of  God,  the  Spirit  of  Christ,  which,  working  through 
the  human  intellect,  in  subtle  and  spiritual  ways,  is 
bringing  in  these  present  critical  changes,  by  which 
the  spirit  of  formalism  is  swept  aside,  and  the  spirit 
of  traditionalism  supplanted  by  the  spirit  of  rational 
inquiry,  of  intellectual  humility,  and  of  a  deepened 
spirituality. 

2d.  The  rigid  limitations  of  time  which  courtesy 
must  impose  upon  these  lectures,  forbid  more  than 
the  barest  allusion  to  the  other  three  characteristic 
forces  in  our  age  which  the  preacher  may,  in  similar 
manner,  seize  upon  and  utilize  in  order  to  fashion  his 
"  mold  of  form  "  suited  to  men  to-day. 

Next  after  the  spirit  of  scientific  investigation  and 
criticism    comes   the    spirit   of    social    combination. 


88  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

This  is  largely  the  product  of  the  scientific  study  of 
the  history  of  man.  Sociology  is  science  applied  to 
social  life. 

It  is  a  platitude  now  to  assert  that  perhaps  the  most 
vital  phenomenon  of  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth 
century  is  the  new  sense  of  society  as  a  corporate 
human  unity,  with  its  own  laws  of  growth.  As  you 
know,  an  entire  new  literature  has  sprung  into  exist- 
ence upon  this  field.  New  departments  have  been 
opened  in  every  college,  and  new  chairs  established. 
What  have  we  as  Christian  ministers  to  say  of  this 
astonishing  new  disclosure  of  social  laws,  of  social 
possibilities?  We  have  distinctly  to  say  this,  that 
while  many  of  the  modern  developments  in  this  field 
are  crude,  many  false,  some  obnoxious  and  perilous  to 
the  State,  yet  beneath  all  else  is  a  genuine  renaissance 
of  Christ's  Christianity.  You  will  not  misimderstand. 
The  field  of  "  sociology  "  is  wild  with  warring  and 
stormy  voices,  but  the  "deeper  voice  across  the 
storm"  is  calling  back  and  on  and  up  to  Christ.  I 
must  think  that  if  Christ  were  to  speak  now  He  would 
surprise  us  all  by  how  much  in  the  modern  world 
He  would  approve.  During  nineteen  centuries  His 
Spirit  has  been  at  work,  and  He  would  not  disavow 
the  results  of  that  working.  He  is  "  standing  at  this 
latter  day  upon  the  earth."  We  must  detect  His 
smile  on  the  time. 

What  a  fact,  and  what  a  force  exists,  then,  here  at 
hand  for  the  preacher,  not  only  for  him  to  perceive 
and  honor,  but  adopt  and  incorporate  as  to  its  spirit 
in  his  own  method  and  style  of  utterance.  So  will 
he  reach  the  people ;  so  will  he  obey  the  law  of  in- 


Relation  of  the  New  Age  to  Preaching    89 

carnation.  He  will  reproduce  Christ's  fellow-feeling 
with  the  people.  Christian  sociology  should  reappear 
in  the  preacher  in  the  form  of  Christian  geniality. 

This  is  a  very  different  thing,  and  a  much  subtler 
and  more  spiritual  thing  than  preaching  about  "social 
questions"  and  "burning  questions,"  etc.  The 
preacher  "preaches  Christ"  always,  but  preaches 
Him  in  the  dialect  furnished  by  the  forms  in  which 
Christ's  own  Spirit  is  working  in  the  age.  We  need 
not  preach  "sociology"  in  the  technical  sense,  but 
we  must  apprehend,  to  use  Ezekiel's  burning  symbol 
— "The  spirit  of  life  "  within  the  modern  "wheels," 
and  make  evident  to  the  people  Christ's  own  accent 
on  it,  and  in  it. 

One  must  of  course   apologize  in  front  of  these 
colossal  modern  movements  for  an  allusion  to  them  so 
fragmentary   and    meagre.       But   there   is   no   other 
option   in   these   brief  addresses.      Suffice  it  to  say 
further  at  this  point,  that  such  sympathy  with  the 
modern  social  spirit  is  the  only  source  of  practical 
answer  to  certain  of  your  own  questions. 
Here  is  question  No.  20,  for  example  — 
"  How  are  young  men  to  be  led  to  the  Church  ?  " 
No.  21 — " How  to  reach  the  children? " 
These  questions  cannot  be  answered  by  mechanism, 
by  devices,  by  patent  prescriptions.     The  preacher 
who  would  attain  these  ends  by  mere  rules  will  fail. 
He  is  to  attain  them  by  bringing  his  manhood  and 
his  preaching  into  a  certain  tone  of  vivid  sympathy 
with  Christ  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  social  life  of 
the  time  on  the  other.     At  whatever  cost  to  himself, 
let  him  come  down  from  his  antiquated  or  factitious 


go  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

professional  pedestals,  and  stand  with  Christ  and 
childhood  on  the  bright  floor  of  the  new  age. 

3d.  The  third  modern  force  which  offers  itself  to 
the  preacher  is  the  Spirit  of  Industrial  Enterprise. 
And  what  is  this  ?  Is  it  not  at  heart  the  union  of  the 
scientific  spirit  with  the  social  spirit  in  application  to 
practical  life  ?  And  how  shall  the  preacher,  therefore, 
regard  this  modern  industrial  realm  ?  As  a  field  re- 
mote from  if  not  alien  to  his  own  ?  Not  if  he  is  wise. 
Here  also  the  undertone  of  the  current  age  is  of  the 
very  essence  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  Here  in  this 
secular  field  also  is  an  unsuspected  disclosure  of  both 
a  poetry  and  a  religion.  The  accuracy,  alertness, 
fidelity,  insisted  on  in  modern  industrial  life,  is  in  the 
line  of  ethical  discipline.  The  "  signal-station  "  man 
must  have  a  conscience,  and  the  age  tends  to  make 
every  man  a  "signal-station"  man.  Rudyard  Kip- 
ling, whose  curious  and  athletic  "break"  into  litera- 
ture, however  at  the  moment  perhaps  discredited,  is 
one  of  the  signs  of  the  times,  has  opened  to  us  some- 
what of  the  unthought-of  poetry  of  industrialism.  On 
how  far  finer  and  deeper  scale  is  there  not  also  a 
Christology  of  industrialism  ! 

But  how  shall  the  preacher  incorporate  and  utilize 
the  industrial  spirit  ?  By  talking  about  "  industrials  "  ? 
Men  would  laugh  at  him.  The  preacher's  art  is  more 
spiritual  than  that.  **  The  message  which  God  sends 
is  spiritual,"  says  Bishop  Simpson.  The  preacher 
should  embody  in  his  sermon  a  certain  tone,  caught 
up  from  the  industrial  life  about  him,  a  habit  of  prac- 
ticality, of  swift  and  sinewy  movement  in  style,  of 
Saxon  brevity  instead  of  Latin  rotundity,  of  concrete 


Relation  of  the  New  Age  to  Preaching    91 

wrestle  with  actual  fact,  a  tone  which  the  business 
man  appreciates  without  knowing  why  he  likes  it. 

In  our  age  the  preacher  has  no  business  to  stand  up 
before  his  congregation  and  muse.  Meditation  has  its 
place,  but  should  come  before  sermon-time. 

Here  is  where  the  genius  of  the  incarnation  applies. 
For,  if  the  minister  were  to  consult  himself  alone,  and 
his  own  preference,  he  would  spin  out  his  subjective 
speculations;  he  would  be  "disquisitions,"  to  use  a 
word  found  in  no  dictionary,  but  which  ought  to  be 
in  the  preacher's,  with  a  sign  up  like  that  for  bicycle 
riders — "This  hill  is  dangerous."  (I  believe  there  is 
such  a  word  as  "  disquisitorial  "  which  might  do  for  a 
brief,  pat  word  of  warning !  ) 

On  the  contrary,  we  in  this  country  are  to  preach 
to  business  men  in  business  communities,  men  who 
come  to  church  Sunday  morning  feeling  still  some- 
thing of  the  terrific  excitement  and  pressure  of  the 
week's  industrial  rivalries.  And  the  Spirit  of  the  In- 
carnation will  lead  us  to  waive  our  tone  of  the  doc- 
trinaire, our  abstractions  and  refinements  of  fancy, 
while  retaining  truth  and  refinement,  and  so  pour  the 
best  of  ourselves  and  of  the  truth  of  Christ  into  a  cer- 
tain form  and  manner  derived  from  our  industrial  age, 
with  that  direct,  concrete,  business-like  method  of 
address  which  will  bring  the  truth  home  to  business 
men. 

Now  this  means  cost  to  the  preacher ;  but  the  cost 
means  power,  and  power  to  save. 

4th.  Thus,  almost  before  he  knows  it,  the  preacher 
will  find  himself  inhaling  the  stimulating  air  of  what 
I  have  ventured  to  call  the  fourth  great  feature  of  the 


92  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

new  age,  viz.  : — the  New  Philanthropy.  And  what 
again  is  this  ?  It  is,  if  I  do  not  mistake,  the  scientific 
spirit,  the  social  spirit  and  the  industrial  spirit,  all 
blended  together  and  touched,  beyond  their  own 
knowledge,  with  the  Spirit  of  Jesus,  for  the  ministries 
of  intelligent  compassion  and  rescue.  Here  is  the 
summit  of  our  four-stepped  modern  terrace. 

There  is  appearing  among  us  a  great  and  sane  altruis- 
tic passion,  the  most  wonderful  thing  in  our  age,  which, 
steadily  searching  back  of  misery,  seeks  with  science 
to  find  and  with  practical  enterprise  to  heal  the  sources 
of  it.  To  realize  how  this  new  and  intellectual  but 
Christian  altruism  is  even  now  spreading  in  the  world, 
is  like  finding  a  new  bank  of  keys  on  an  old,  vast 
organ.  A  man  who  preaches  in  this  spirit  will  not  be 
"preaching  to  yesterday,  or  about  yesterday,"  to 
quote  Dr.  Greer's  apt  phrase  in  his  lectures  on  "  The 
Preacher  and  his  Place,"  but  he  will  make  yesterday 
and  to-day  and  to-morrow  as  of  one  piece,  one  broad 
and  living  present.  He  will  walk  with  his  Christ  be- 
tween the  church  and  the  hospital.  It  is  in  this  fresh 
union  of  Christ's  altruism  with  modern  intelligence, 
heat  and  light  together,  that  we  escape  from  the  tyran- 
nies of  obsolete  forms,  reenter  into  the  sense  of 
Christ's  own  freedom  and  living  power,  and  in  our 
turn  reach  that  in  man  which  is  perennial  and  im- 
mortal. 

In  each  of  these  four  inter-related  and  progressively 
ascending  fields,  then,  that  of  scientific  criticism,  of 
social  reconstruction,  of  industrial  enterprise  and  of 
the  new  philanthropy,  we  discover  that  the  chief  ele- 
ments in  the  life  of  the  modern  time  are  of  God,  are 


Relation  of  the  New  Age  to  Preaching    93 

of  Christ,  and  offer  to  the  preacher  the  noblest  ma- 
terial and  method.  But  let  it  be  said  with  final  em- 
pliasis  that  not  until  we  combine  these  factors  and  re- 
gard them  in  their  wonderful  interaction  and  com- 
posite unity,  do  we  find  breaking  upon  us  the  full 
glory  of  the  relation  of  this  age  to  preaching,  for  we 
shall  discover  that  this  very  interaction  is  most  favor- 
able to  the  union  of  true  art  and  sacramental  devotion 
in  the  pulpit.  Time  does  not  permit  the  full  elucida- 
tion of  this  subtle  and  superb  fact.  But  it  is  a  fact 
beyond  question.  "In  hoc  signo  vinces."  For,  on 
the  artistic  side,  if  I  mistake  not,  art  in  this  age,  under 
the  influence  of  these  four  tendencies  of  which  we  have 
spoken,  is  seeking,  as  never  before,  to  be  vital  rather 
than  merely  formal. 

Criticism  is  driving  art  back  to  reality,  not  indeed 
to  the  mere  "fanciless  fact,"  to  use  Browning's 
phrase,  but  to  that  large  reality  a  part  of  which  is  tlie 
movement  of  the  inner  spirit.  And  this  is  true  all 
along  the  line  of  literary,  as  well  as  pictorial  and 
plastic  art.  The  entire  art  spirit  of  the  age  is  becom- 
ing inoculated  with  a  certain  noble,  intense  sense  of 
the  claim  of  life  upon  it.  A  preacher  now,  therefore, 
as  never  before,  can  cultivate  true  art  without  losing 
hold  on  real  life. 

At  the  same  time,  on  the  other  hand,  and  in  the 
higher  scale,  this  age,  beyond  any  other  age  since  the 
apostolic,  is  worthy  to  be  called  the  age,  the  arena, 
the  very  "Cathedral"  of  the  Incarnation,  in  this 
sense,  that  the  minds  of  thinking  men  and  of  Christian 
men  are  more  than  ever  turning  towards  this  truth  of 
the  Incarnation  as  the  solvent  of  problems,  the  master- 


94  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

note  in  philosophy  and  the  key  to  Christian  history 
and  to  Christian  Hfe — 

"  Which  shall  to  all  our  nights  and  days  to  come 
Give  solely  sovereign  sway  and  masterdom."  ' 

It  comes  to  this,  therefore,  that  from  the  union  of 
these  currents  of  modern  feeling,  an  atmosphere  is 
created  in  our  age,  which  the  true  preacher  finds  ex- 
actly fitted  to  stimulate  him  to  his  best  work,  both  in 
the  artistic  and  the  sacramental  planes.  He  is  not 
driven  in  upon  a  fraction  of  himself.  His  best  power 
is  drawn  out  in  many  directions.  The  same  stroke 
which  makes  for  his  truest  manhood  makes  for  his 
finest  ministry.  When  most  in  sympathy  with  the  age, 
he  is  most  stirred  up  to  preach  to  it. 

It  is  impossible  to  put  this  truth  too  strongly, 
although  we  do  well  to  remember  that  wise  line  in  the 
Proverbs — "He  that  hath  knowledge  spareth  his 
words."  But  let  me  venture  again  to  assert  that  the 
scientific,  the  social,  the  industrial,  the  humanitarian 
tendencies,  interacting,  create  almost  a  new  and  splen- 
did language,  in  which,  with  a  nameless  sense  of 
exhilaration  and  free  power,  the  preacher  can  sound 
and  cry  aloud  the  glory  of  the  gospel  truth.  He  dis- 
covers with  a  kind  of  amazement  that  when  in  the 
broadest  way  he  can  realize  the  genius  of  the  time,  he 
is  in  the  best  mood  for  preaching  Christ  to  the  time. 

Why,  gentlemen,  the  very  latest   science   itself  is 

approaching  the  reverential  in  its  new  temper  towards 

the  unrolling  greatness  of  its  vistas.     The   reverent 

silence  of  science  in  front  of  the  newly  apprehended 

» "  Macbeth." 


Relation  of  the  New  Age  to  Preaching    95 

vastness  of  its  God,  is  by  crude  religionists  mistaken 
for  skepticism.  Science  investigating  Nature  must  at 
last  come  up  to  Jesus,  who  stands  at  the  summit  of 
Nature,  integral  with  it,  yet  "God  manifest."  Phil- 
anthropy studying  humanity  must  also  at  last  come  up 
to  Jesus  as  "  the  Christ  " — the  Saviour  of  men.  The 
age  is  thus  coming  to  our  Christ  and,  carrying  Christ 
in  our  heart,  we,  on  our  part,  run  forth  to  meet  the 
age.  How  to  find  in  the  age — how  to  make/rom  the 
age  a  new  "body  of  Christ,"  becomes  instantly  our 
fascinating,  absorbing  errand. 

The  attempt  to  do  this,  to  take  what  is  most  charac- 
teristic in  modern  life  as  a  new  and  brilliant  dialect 
in  which  to  state  once  again  Christ  and  Christ's 
changeless,  ever-living  truth — this  attempt,  carried 
steadily  through  the  years,  produces  in  the  preacher  a 
certain  habitual  glow,  an  alert  mental  attitude  and 
action,  in  which  free  intellect  blends  with  spiritual 
chivalry,  and  which  is  the  finest  possible  mood  for 
preaching  itself. 

Pardon  a  closing  word  to  guard  against  misunder- 
standing. For  any  truth  so  fine  as  this  is  bound  to 
have  its  counterfeits,  and  clever  counterfeits,  too. 
And  so  along  our  public  ways  and  even  our  church 
aisles,  perambulate  the  many  simtilao-a  of  this  great, 
simple  thing  we  have  been  talking  about.  We  behold 
the  illuminati  of  every  craze,  the  acolytes  of  esoteric 
cults,  all  of  them  using  something  of  this  very  language 
concerning  "reincarnation,"  some  of  them  calling 
themselves  "Christian,"  and  some  "scientific,"  while 
others  try  for  a  mixture  of  both,  without  much  of 
either. 


96  Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

All  these  high-stepping  people  lack  one  thing  and 
that  is  humor.  They  lack  another  thing  and  that  is 
symmetry.  They  lack  still  a  third  thing  most  of  all, 
and  that  is  humility.  They  all  say  that  they  are  "  led 
by  the  Spirit."  They  all  talk  of  a  "Higher  Life." 
Thus  they  steal  the  nomenclature  of  the  true  heavens, 
and  some  of  them  are  really  very  noble  in  aim  while 
mistaken  in  method.  The  vital  fault  with  them  all  is 
that,  without  knowing  it,  they  are  putting  substitution 
in  place  of  genuine  incarnation.  On  a  higher  and 
more  truly  Christian  level  something  of  the  same  error 
occasionally  appears.  Perhaps  even  certain  of  our 
honored  brethren  of  the  "Keswick"  and  "North- 
field  "  schools  of  thought  are  not  quite  careful  enough 
to  guard  this  point.  We  need  the  Greek  sense  of 
open  air  perspective  transferred  to  the  spiritual  life, — 
the  Greek  sense  of  health,  fitness,  harmonious  propor- 
tion, realized  in  the  moral  and  spiritual  ideals.  The 
higher  life  is  the  higher  use  of  the  lower  life.  The 
attempt  to  substitute  the  sacred  for  the  secular  is  not 
so  divine  as  the  attempt  to  put  the  sacred  into  the 
secular.  The  genuine  incarnation  is  blood  red  with 
human  vitality.  It  turns  not  away  from  common, 
natural  things  and  thoughts,  but  pours  the  Divine 
Spirit,  without  loss  thereof,  into  common  sense,  into 
current  life,  into  secular  adaptations,  into  natural  laws, 
into  good  humor,  justice,  candor,  charity. 

Apprehending  these  things,  the  true  preacher  is 
himself  kept  from  such  counterfeits  as  have  been  in- 
dicated. He  is  kept  from  pride  and  from  a  mawkish 
and  stilted  professionalism,  as  well  as  from  that  undue 
specialism  which  is  the  bane  of  the  preacher.     He  is 


Relation  of  the  New  Age  to  Preaching     97 

kept  large  minded,  sweet  tempered,  sane  and  prac- 
tical. He  neither  emphasizes  form  above  the  spirit, 
nor,  on  the  other  hand,  emphasizes  the  spirit  to  the 
neglect  of  the  form,  which  of  the  two  is  the  subtler 
sin.  Always  it  is  the  vital  rather  than  the  professional 
which  he  seeks.  He  discovers  that  what  the  age  is 
hungering  for  and  searching  after  is  truth  in  forms  of 
justice  and  love  in  forms  of  beauty,  and  he  knows  that 
in  his  Christ  is  this  very  union  of  divine  "truth  and 
grace."  That  union  he  himself  also  strives  to  suggest 
in  at  least  some  far-off  hint  thereof  by  his  life  and 
preaching. 

Does  this  ideal  seem  too  difficult,  too  high  for  us, — 
almost  unattainable  ?  I  would  avoid  the  impression 
that  an  impossible  ideal  for  the  preacher  is  set  up  in 
these  simple  addresses. 

Let  us  be  reverent  and  humble.  Our  Master  ac- 
complishes most  of  the  "attaining"  for  us.  "Not 
that  I  have  already  obtained,  or  am  already  made  per- 
fect," cries  the  veteran  Paul,  "but  I  press  on.'" 

Ah,  great  Apostle,  thou  dost  lead  a  long  procession 
of  us  in  that !  We  only  ^^ press  on,^^ — archers  only 
(with  the  shot  falling  short)  but  archers  at  some- 
thing divinely  grand.  Let  us  with  really  roused  mind 
do  our  full  best ;  that  is  all.  Leave  the  rest  to  the 
unseen  forces  which  are  not  only  supplementing  our 
own,  but  are  within  our  own,  even  as  our  Lord  prom- 
ised. Only  if  we  do  our  best  this  week,  let  us  next 
week  do  still  better.  For  even  the  great  incarnation 
of  God  in  Christ  Jesus  was  an  incarnation  into  a 
growth,  in  which  babyhood  precedes  childhood  and 
the  child  the  man. 


LECTURE  V 

THE  PREACHER  OF  TO-DAY  PREPARING 
HIS  SERMON 


LECTURE  V 

THE   PREACHER   OF  TO-DAY  PREPARING  HIS 
SERMON 

It  is  not,  as  must  be  again  emphasized,  within 
the  purpose  of  these  addresses  to  repeat  any  por- 
tion of  that  elaborate  code  of  professional  rules 
concerning  the  preparation  of  sermons  which  you  al- 
ready have  at  hand  in  volumes  upon  this  subject  by 
the  great  masters  of  the  art ;  and  as  to  the  prepara- 
tion of  itidividual  sermons,  the  homiletic  technique 
remains,  even  at  the  present  moment,  essentially  the 
same  as  ever.  In  no  profession,  probably,  has  the 
distinctive  note  of  technical  preparation  for  special 
effort  so  little  changed. 

But  when  we  apply  our  principles  to  the  general 
field  of  sermon  preparation,  we  become  aware  of  cer- 
tain new  features  of  method  especially  suited  to  our 
own  time.  Two  or  three  of  these  I  will  venture  to 
suggest  to-night. 

And  yet  I  have  the  deepening  feeling  that  the  best 
success  in  preaching  is  scarcely  an  affair  of  rules  at 
all.  Art  in  preaching  is  too  vital  to  allow  artifice. 
And  when  we  go  on  from  the  idea  of  art  to  that  con- 
ception of  preaching  which  has  been  at  the  heart  of 
these  discussions,  and  regard  it,  in  the  soul  of  it,  as  a 
genuine  incarnation,  a  reembodiment,  under  human 
limitations,  but  in   timely  forms,   of  the  very  Spirit 

lOI 


102        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

and  Message  of  the  Master,  then  we  perceive  how  the 
mere  empirical  rule  must  fail.  Read  such  a  book, 
for  example,  as  the  very  interesting  ' '  Lectures  on  the 
History  of  Preaching,"  by  Dr.  Broadus,'  and  one 
is  almost  startled  to  learn  how  equal  successes  in  this 
field  have  been  associated  with  pulpit  styles,  denoting 
an  almost  infinite  variety  in  manner  of  address.  And 
there  is  good  reason  in  this,  for  Nature's  distinctive 
stamp  on  a  man  is  most  evident  when  that  man  is  at 
his  best,  and  in  the  pulpit  a  man  must  be  at  his  best  or 
fail.  The  truer  the  man,  therefore,  the  more  his  style 
of  preaching  will  be  his  own.  The  "Dii  majorum 
gentium  "  of  the  pulpit  are  as  unlike  each  other  as  are 
the  books  of  the  Bible,  and  yet  as  like.  In  no  other 
field,  accordingly,  is  the  mere  imitator  so  sure  of  ig- 
nominious failure  as  in  preaching,  and  the  pity  of  it 
is  that  even  these  failures  do  not  seem  to  deter  the 
fresh  imitators. 

What  I  shall  say,  therefore,  must  not  be  taken  as 
insistence  upon  any  rule,  but  as  a  hint  towards  certain 
features  of  method  which  our  general  argument  em- 
phasizes. 

First.  And  first,  may  I  say,  have  several  sermons  in 
course  of  preparation  at  once.  For,  according  to  our 
argument,  the  main  thing  in  preparing  the  sermon  is 
to  prepare  the  preacher, — to  make  the  preacher  at  the 
same  time  with  making  the  sermon.  The  impor- 
tant result  to  be  secured  is  not  the  production  of  a 
particular  sermon,  but  is  the  production  of  a  man 

'  Lectures  on  the  "  History  of  Preaching,"  by  John  A. 
Broadus,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.,  Professor  in  the  Southern  Baptist 
Seminary,  Louisville,  Ky. — N.  Y.,  Armstrong  &  Son,  1896. 


The  Preacher  Preparing  His  Sermon     103 

who  can  preach.  He  is  to  be  the  sermon.  And 
the  best  preparation  for  his  first  five  sermons  is 
that  which  continued  for  five  years  will  make  him  the 
best  preacher.  Not  only  is  some  particular  tune  to  be 
played,  but  the  harp  itself  is  to  be  strung  and  tuned 
and  set  in  the  way  of  the  winds  of  God.  Now  the 
practice  of  having  several  sermons  in  hand  at  once  is, 
for  many  men  certainly,  the  best  way  to  realize  this 
large  errand.  One  must  not  restrict  one's  self  to  the 
comparatively  petty  object  of  preparing  next  Sun- 
day's sermon  during  the  week  before.  In  the  multi- 
farious duties  of  the  modern  ministry,  much  time  can- 
not be  spent  on  every  sermon.  But  the  preacher 
should  always  be  spending  much  time  on  some  sermon. 
Let  the  modern  sermon  builder  have  the  light  dis- 
patch boat  and  the  ironclad  battleship  both  building 
at  once.  Let  him  select  a  great  theme  and  put  out 
his  utmost  strength  upon  it  for  a  month,  two  months, 
subjecting  that  sermon  to  merciless  reforging,  trying 
it  by  the  three  norms  of  style  spoken  of  in  our  second 
lecture,  rewriting  it  half  a  dozen  times.  Let  him  cut 
every  bit  of  padding  out  of  it,  for  one  way  to  be  at 
least  approximately  interesting  is  to  leave  out  what  is 
conspicuously  dull,  and  if  that  process  reduces  us  to 
the  mere  text  and  "Amen,"  the  frank  statement  of 
that  fact  will  certainly  insure  a  large  congregation  the 
next  Sunday.  But  what  with  fresh  ingathering  and 
then  winnowing  away,  let  the  man  make  this  particular 
sermon  the  most  athletic  and  finished  thing  he  can 
produce;  while,  at  the  same  time,  current  sermons 
are  also  prepared  more  briefly  with  a  lighter  hand,  by 
a  simpler  and  swifter  method. 


104        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

You  say  this  will  result  in  inequality.  Certainly. 
The  most  finely  educative  forces  in  our  day  do  not 
result  in  mechanical  equality.  Emerson's  famous 
quatrain  applies  not  unaptly  in  this  realm  of  the 
preacher : 

"  There  is  no  great  and  no  small 
To  the  Soul  that  maketh  all; 
And  where  it  cometh  all  things  are, 
And  it  cometh  everywhere." 

Sermons  are  not  pieces  of  a  long  roll  of  bread, — ex- 
actly the  same  length  of  piece  cut  off  every  Sunday. 
The  real  sermon  is  the  symphony  of  forty  sermons. 
The  particular  inequality  which,  in  the  course  of  years, 
contributes  to  the  noblest  symmetry  on  the  whole,  is 
best  both  for  the  congregation  and  for  the  preacher. 
Your  people  will  very  soon  find  out  what  you  are  at, 
and  will  respect  the  resolute  energy  of  your  effort  to 
make  yourself  the  best  preacher  you  can  be. 

But  then,  after  your  great  sermon  is  finished,  the 
Lord  will  probably  humble  you  in  your  own  eyes. 
You  will  very  possibly  experience  a  whimsical  discom- 
fiture, and  find  your  magnificent  effort  outclassed  in 
practical  effect  by  what  will  come  to  you  in  the  sud- 
den inspiration  of  the  moment.  The  point,  however, 
is,  and  the  law  is,  that  such  sudden  flash  from  God  is 
prepared  for  and  made  possible  for  you  by  just  this 
patient,  valiant  hammering  at  the  professional  forge. 

Secojid.  In  preparing  these  various  sermons  employ 
purposely  different  styles  of  handling.  No  man 
knows  at  first  what  his  best  style  is.  If  he  finds  out 
in  five  years  he  will  do  well.     St.  Paul  himself  tried 


The  Preacher  Preparing  His  Sermon     105 

experiments.  He  said  to  the  Corinthians  that  he  be- 
came "  all  things  to  all  men."  Only  we  must  bear  in 
mind  that  the  area  of  St.  Paul's  experimenting  was 
determined  by  the  object  he  had  in  view.  This  was 
to  save  men.  "I  am  become  all  things  to  all  men 
that  I  may  by  all  means  save  some."  The  force  of 
the  passage  is  in  the  conjunction,  as  also  in  the  corre- 
lated phrase  in  the  context,  "that  I  might  gain  " 
(i  Cor.  9  :  19-22).  The  Apostle  reiterates  the  phrase 
like  a  blow.  Five  separate  times  in  this  same  connection 
he  repeats  it,  indicating  how  varied  was  his  method, 
and  yet  how  the  variety  was  dominated  by  the  one 
errand  of  gaining  men.  So  now,  if  a  preacher  excuses 
himself  for  a  kind  of  loose  ad  captanduni  variety  in 
method  by  saying  he  is  making  himself  "  all  things  to 
all  men  "  and  stops  there,  his  position  is  contemptible. 
Our  errand  is  not  to  amuse,  but  to  save.  But  it  is  to 
amuse  or  anything  else  so  far  as  it  will  save. 

Now,  in  order  to  secure  this  flexibility  of  adaptation, 
we  must  put  ourselves  under  a  training  for  various 
styles,  or  rather  for  a  method  in  style  which  admits  at 
once  of  outward  variation  with  inner  consistency.  So 
only  \vill  the  preacher  fulfill  that  fine  maxim  of  the 
"  Phaedrus  " — (the  latter  half  of  which,  by  the  way, 
the  preacher  may  as  well  read  once  a  year)  and  "speak 
or  act  about  rhetoric  in  a  manner  which  will  be  ac- 
ceptable to  God."  What  the  preacher  is  striving  for 
is  to  make  himself,  not  all  at  once,  but  as  soon  as  he 
can,  Christ's  true  artist  in  speech,  Christ's  own  spokes- 
man before  the  people,  in  their  dialect  of  thought — a 
master  of  expression  in  forms  which  will  win  and  save. 
Do  not  then  crystallize,  at  least  do  not  ossify  too  soon 


lo6        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

into  a  given  style,  for  such  a  style,  caught  up  crudely 
at  first,  will  be  apt  to  become  ' '  cumbered  with  much 
serving,"  ponderously  didactic,  lacking  lightness,  as 
though  one  had  sat  on  his  loaf  of  bread.  Keep  the 
intellectual  fleet  lightly  moored — swinging  a  little  at 
anchor.  Try  half  a  dozen  styles,  only  maintaining 
vital  unity  of  purpose.  Temporary  failure,  here  or 
there,  matters  little.  I  remember  a  remark  of  Henry 
Ward  Beecher,  "No  man  succeeds  who  doesn't  dare 
to  fail."  The  man's  finest  and  best  style  will  at  last 
be  a  certain  spontaneous  coincidence  of  a  dozen  par- 
tial approximations,  each  of  which  will  have  seemed 
to  him  half  a  failure. 

Third.  Nevertheless,  steadily,  insistently,  seek  to 
secure,  and  as  soon  as  possible,  that  style  which  is  best 
for  you,  and  best  for  the  modern  mind  to  which  you 
speak.  We  had  best  use  our  best  as  we  go  along.  As 
was  argued  in  our  second  lecture,  style — the  form  of  a 
noble  art  for  the  preacher, — has  its  vital  root  in  the 
philosophy  of  the  Incarnation  itself.  It  is  truth  in 
forms  of  beauty,  earnestness  in  forms  of  grace.  And 
we  must  not  put  off  the  endeavor  to  secure  that  one 
among  these  forms  which  for  us  is  most  natural  and 
vital. 

The  books  are  full  of  delightfully  contradictory  in- 
structions upon  this  matter  of  style,  and  no  wonder, 
for  I  suppose  that  style  is  very  much  like  a  man's  gait 
in  walking,  or  the  way  he  sits  his  horse  in  riding. 
How  can  a  short  man  do  it  in  a  tall  man's  way? 
Then,  too,  style  is  a  thing  of  paragraphs  as  much  as 
of  sentences.  It  is  the  rhythm  of  mental  march.  It 
resides  not  in  a  single  quality,  but  in  a  synthesis  of 


The  Preacher  Preparing  His  Sermon     107 

qualities.  One  would  say  it  is  the  product,  first,  of  a 
man's  general  mental  attitude,  and,  secondly,  of  his 
action  from  that  attitude.  The  mere  stringing  to- 
gether of  truths  is  not  style  and  is  not  preaching. 

Style  for  the  preacher  is,  I  repeat,  a  kind  of  chiv- 
alry. It  is  soul.  It  is  the  whole  man's  free  force 
flung  gallantly  into  genial  expression.  One  should 
write  so  that  when  not  reading  the  phrase,  but  saying 
it  as  if  extemporaneously,  in  the  rush  of  swift  speech, 
it  will  be  his  own  most  natural  way  of  expressing 
himself.  And  then,  beyond  that,  we  must  dare  still 
to  believe  that  style  relates  to  that  which  is  of  the  liv- 
ing essence  of  the  Beauty  of  God,  a  part  of  the  order 
of  Eternal  Truth. 

Style  is  nothing  short  of  a  divine  thing,  and  when 
your  impatient  friend  remarks  **you  are  too  sedu- 
lous about  the  mere  form  of  the  thought, "  he  is  to  be 
regarded  with  a  gentle  tolerance  and  a  wonder  how  he 
can  forget  that  the  form  of  the  thought  is  a  part  of  the 
thought,  and  that  a  similar  criticism  could  be  directed 
against  the  very  method  of  the  Incarnation  itself. 

The  philosophy  of  the  Incarnation,  and  of  the 
higher  art  as  well,  acknowledges  the  eternal  worth  of 
form  in  the  sacred  relation  of  form  to  beauty  and  of 
beauty  to  truth. 

Fourth.  But  not  to  stay  too  long  upon  these  altitudes, 
let  me  say  in  more  practical  vein  that  all  this  involves 
the  use  of  no  rhetorical  stilts.  The  method  of  ser- 
monizing must  be  simple.  Stilts  are  the  worst  sort  of 
crutches.  It  is  much  better  to  speak  simply  about 
something  that  is  interesting  than  to  speak  tremen- 
dously about  something  that  is  not  interesting. 


io8        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

You  will  remember  Goethe's  raillery  in  "  Faust "  — 

"  And  when  you've  something  earnest  to  utter, 
Why  hunt  for  words  in  such  a  flutter  ? 
Yes,  your  discourses,  that  are  so  refined, 
In  which  humanity's  poor  shreds  you  frizzle, 
Are  unrefreshing  as  the  mist  and  wind 
That  through  the  witliered  leaves  of  autumn  whistle,"  * 

Let  us  enter  the  minister's  study  when  a  sermon  is 
to  be  prepared.  How  shall  he  begin  it?  He  must 
indeed  be  roused  and  alive ;  but  he  must  begin  simply. 
There  is  but  one  real  rule  as  to  beginning  a  sermon. 
Begin  where  the  people  are.  The  sermon  should 
have  saliency  at  the  start,  but  saliency  with  natural- 
ness. 

Do  not  content  yourself  with  what  you  write  down 
easily  enough  in  a  lazy,  "logy"  hour  ("Logy"  is 
a  "local  United  States  word,"  according  to  the  dic- 
tionary, but  it  means  what  I  mean).  Accept  nothing 
as  a  constituent  element  of  your  real  style  which  is 
not  the  product  of  roused  energy  in  free  action.  The 
mood  of  the  time  is  intense  and  practical.  Nothing 
tame  will  match  it.  Get  stirred  all  through  by 
something  fine.  Then,  having  fired  up  the  mental 
furnaces,  pile  in  the  crude  ore,  turn  on  the  blast, 
cram  down  the  gate,  shut  the  blaze  in,  let  the  ore 
melt,  so  that  the  good  metal  may  pour  forth  all  at 
once, — glowing,  liquid  iron.  In  that  mood,  write  rap- 
idly ;  dash  along.  Never  mind  correctness.  For  the 
moment,  forget  rules.  If  my  honored  friend,  Pro- 
fessor Merriam,*  will  pardon  me,  I  would  say,  toss 

'  "  Faust  "  Brook's  translation. 

-  Professor  of  Practical  Theology  in  Hartford  Seminary. 


The  Preacher  Preparing  His  Sermon     109 

even  homiletics  out  of  the  window.  Pour  everything 
into  expression,  just  as  it  naturally  comes, — thought, 
emotion,  passion,  the  entire  real  manhood  of  you,  all 
quiveringly  alive  on  the  page.  Then,  two  days  after, 
beg  Professor  Merriam's  pardon,  summon  him  in, 
take  your  scissors,  and  with  his  help  correct  the  ex- 
travagances of  your  work.  You  will  cut  away  a 
third  of  it,  half  of  it,  only  you  will  not  cut  the  life  of 
it  away,  and  it  will  be  alive. 

Successive  approximations  of  this  kind,  pursued 
with  as  definite  and  unrelaxing  purpose  as  that  with 
which  an  oarsman  trains  himself  to  row,  will,  little  by 
little,  reveal  to  a  man  his  own  best  intellectual  gaif, 
for  the  purpose  of  reaching  the  minds  of  men  to-day. 
He  will  learn  that  particular  succession  of  intellectual 
phases,  his  mind's  march  through  which  constitutes 
his  style. — Thenceforward,  let  him  throw  the  accent 
on  this  method  which  for  him  is  best,  but  even  then 
not  be  tied  to  it. 

We  ministers,  I  suspect,  are  sometimes,  without 
knowing  it,  buried  in  our  own  seriousness,  entombed 
in  mere  dull  didactics,  of  which  people  nowadays  are 
impatient,  in  which  there  is  neither  noble  art  nor  any 
true  embodiment  of  the  graceful  and  holy  genius  of 
the  Christian  Incarnation.  We  are  literally  dead  in 
earnest.  John  the  Baptist  was  serious  and  in  earnest 
but,  speaking  reverently,  we  may  say  that  he  had  not 
the  divine  sfyle  of  the  Nazarene.  This  is  not  irrever- 
ence. It  is  putting  style  where  it  belongs  in  the  rubric 
of  the  preacher,  viz.,  on  the  highest  possible  plane, 
where  is  revealed  that  beauty  of  truth  in  the  grace  of 
Christ,  which  we  seek,  as  preachers,  the  re-rendition  of 


no        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

some  little  touch,  if  it  may  be,  of  the  divine  charm, 
wherein  is  the  essence  of  the  gospel. 

I  once  called  to  see  a  minister.  His  wife  said  I 
could  not  see  him,  as  he  was  "buried  deep  in  his 
sermon."  I  happened  to  hear  that  sermon  afterwards 
and  I  thought  she  told  the  truth.  The  man's  mind 
had  become  so  absorbed  in  its  own  gravity  that  it  had 
unaware  turned  right  round  on  itself  and  it  was  stand- 
ing with  the  back  of  its  head  to  the  congregation 
when  he  preached. 

Here,  then,  arises  the  question,  which  is  the  better, 
the  written  or  the  extemporaneous  method  for  the 
preacher  of  to-day?  I  would  venture  to  answer — 
both,  each,  all.  The  books  give  diverse  answers. 
Shall  we  not  rather  say  one  method  for  one  man, 
another  for  another.  One  for  one  period  in  a  man's 
life,  another  for  a  later.  One  for  one  congregation, 
one  occasion,  another  for  another.  A  man  should 
train  himself  in  both  methods.  Lamp  oil  alone  will 
not  create  the  sermon.  The  question  of  paper  or  no 
paper  has  little  to  do  with  the  vitality  of  preaching. 

Some  men  read  as  though  they  spoke,  and  some 
men  speak  as  though  they  read.  Phillips  Brooks,  in 
some  vital  respects  the  noblest  preacher  of  our  genera- 
tion in  this  land,  read  as  though  the  paper  were  bla- 
zing in  front  of  him.  Conversely,  any  man,  if  really 
roused,  can  say  on  the  spur  of  the  moment  what  is 
better  than  the  poorer  half  of  what  he  will  write. 

The  preacher  ought  to  be  ashamed  to  be  a  slave  of 
any  method.  He  is  to  make  himself  master  of  his 
art, — not  at  once,  but  after  ten  years,  twenty  years  of 
steady,  resolute,  consecrated   drill.     At   the  end  of 


The  Preacher  Preparing  His  Sermon     1 1 1 

that  time,  with  paper  or  without,  he  ought  to  be  ready 
and  able  to  face  any  congregation,  with  much  or  little 
immediate  preparation,  in  the  name  of  his  Master, 
with  God's  good  news  of  spiritual  rescue. 

The  best  monograph  on  extemporaneous  preaching 
is  Dr.  Storrs'  now  famous  little  book — "Preaching 
without  Notes."  But  even  that  is  not  certain  to  make 
every  man  another  Dr.  Storrs.  Dr.  Storrs  was  the 
greatest  pulpit  orator  of  our  epoch  in  this  land, — the 
Cicero  of  Congregationalism.  His  mind  was  two 
minds  in  one.  In  one  lobe  it  was  facile  and  fluent 
as  quicksilver,  branching  in  every  direction,  and 
every  fragment  a  perfect  globule ;  while  yet  in  the 
other  lobe  it  was  as  insistent  upon  consecutive  logical 
progress  as  is  the  shining  sweep  of  a  mighty  river. 
But  Dr.  Storrs  formed  his  extemporaneous  style  by  a 
steady  quarter  century  with  the  pen. 

The  late  Dr.  Shedd,^  in  his  book  upon  "Homi- 
letics,"  remarks  very  felicitously  that  the  word  "ex- 
temporaneous" should  be  construed,  not  from  the 
"particular  instant"  but  "from  all  the  time,  past  as 
well  as  present."  If  the  subject  "possesses "  a  man, 
if  he  knows  his  theme,  what  he  wants  to  say,  and 
especially  what  he  wants  to  do  with  and  for  his  con- 
gregation, then  the  main  conscious  effort  of  the 
preacher  will  be  to  keep  himself  en  rapport  with 
those  to  whom  he  speaks,  making  them  to  think  his 
thoughts,  and  to  feel  as  he  feels.  Yet  the  young 
preacher  will  make  a  mistake,  if  instead  of  urging 
what   is   interesting   and  vital   to  himself,   he  utters 

•  Shedd's  "  Homiletics,"  p.  219. 


112        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

merely  what  he  may  think  ought  to  be  interesting  and 
vital  to  his  people. 

One  secret,  no  doubt,  of  success  in  extempore  ad- 
dress is  to  have  absolutely  in  mind  the  practical  end 
sought  to  be  secured  with  the  congregation.  Avoid 
too  many  subdivisions.  Let  two-thirds  of  what  you 
think  you  might  say  go  unsaid.  Then  with  a  few 
main  branchings  or  sub-topics  of  the  theme  also 
clearly  in  mind,  let  there  be  a  swift  rush  of  evident 
mental  progress  through  those  topics,  in  the  spirit  of 
the  theme  to  the  practical  end.  If  ten  minutes  suffice 
for  that,  then  let  the  preacher  take  his  seat  at  the  end 
of  his  ten  minutes.  He  will  not  have  exhausted  the 
subject  or  the  congregation  either,  but  he  will  have 
made  a  good  extempore  sermon  for  the  men  of  our 
time. 

When  a  student,  I  once  preached  in  a  church  in 
Connecticut.  After  I  had  finished,  a  deacon  I  knew 
— and  nobody  but  a  Connecticut  deacon  could  have 
done  it — said  to  me:  "Well,  brother,  I  think  you 
have  about  exhausted  the  subject — as  well  as  the  con- 
gregation !  "     I  took  the  next  train. 

Do  not,  then,  tell  all  you  know  or  attempt  to  ex- 
haust the  field  of  theology  in  one  sermon. 

I  believe  the  best  general  idea  of  manuscript  help 
for  most  men  in  preaching  to-day  is  that  of  the 
"brief,"  as  the  lawyers  would  say, — an  outline,  more 
or  less  complete,  of  what  the  man  intends  to  deliver, 
with  some  parts  perhaps  written  out  in  full,  and  with 
careful  literary  finish,  and  other  parts  just  "  blazed 
through,"  as  the  lumbermen  say  in  going  through  a 
new  piece  of  timber,  so  allowing  the  freest  play  i^  the 


The  Preacher  Preparing  His  Sermon     113 

inspiration  of  the  moment  when  facing  the  audience. 
The  people  will  very  probably  like  the  "blazed" 
parts  best. 

Pascal  remarks  in  his  brilliant  little  fragment  on 
"The  Art  of  Persuasion" — "The  best  books  are 
those  which  those  who  read  them  believe  they  them- 
selves could  have  written."  So,  we  may  almost  say, 
the  best  sermons  are  those  which  those  who  hear  them 
believe  they  themselves  could  have  preached, — so  es- 
sentially important  is  clearness  and  simplicity  and  a 
mutual  good  understanding  between  preacher  and 
hearer.  The  manuscript,  if  it  be  much  in  evidence, 
is  apt  to  obstruct  this  quick-current  of  mental  fellow- 
ship. 

On  the  whole,  if  I  were  to  start  in  my  profession 
over  again,  I  should  make  most  of  my  manuscripts 
"briefs  "  of  sermons.  One  advantage  is  that  if  kept 
they  do  not  take  up  so  much  room  twenty  years  after- 
wards.^ 

Fifth.  Confining  our  attention  now  to  a  given 
sermon,  I  would  say,  do  not  attempt  to  prepare  more 
than  one  formal  sermon  a  week,  but  prepare  yourself 
to  preach  twice,  if  necessary,  or  even  more.     In  other 

1  Just  a  hint  here  as  to  the  use  of  manuscript  in  the  pulpit. 
The  best  method  I  have  ever  discovered  (and  I  had  to  discover 
it — necessity  in  that  case  was  the  mother  of  invention),  is  so 
variedly  to  distribute  the  crow  tracks  of  one's  writing  on  the 
page  as  that  the  mere  sight  of  the  page,  or  of  two  or  three  largely 
written  or  utiderscored  "  catch  words  "  on  it,  will  recall  to  one's 
memory  the  entire  page  ;  so  that  you  can  have  your  sermon  en- 
tirely written  out,  and  yet  read  it  so  that  nobody  will  know 
that  it  is  written. 


114        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

words,  always  let  sermon-making  be  the  vital  training 
of  the  power  to  preach,  as  well  as  the  production  of  a 
particular  discourse. 

It  is  a  good  rule  to  begin  the  sermon  very  early  in 
the  week  and  make  the  entire  week's  work  contribute 
to  it,  not  necessarily  in  a  formal,  explicit  way,  but 
dynamically,  if  I  may  use  the  word.  "  A  man  may 
write  at  any  time,  if  he  will  set  himself  doggedly  to 
it,"  said  old  Sam  Johnson.  Our  time  is  varied,  tu- 
multuous, insistent.  We  must  grapple  with  it,  we 
must  match  it.  Therefore,  let  us  make  the  entire 
current  of  every-day  thought  and  life,  newspapers, 
magazine  literature,  hard  reading  in  the  study,  social 
visits,  parish  calls,  prayers  by  the  dying, — the  entire 
orchestration  of  the  week,  glad  and  sad,  to  tell  in  the 
sermon,  not  merely  in  the  way  of  furnishing  for  it 
material,  but  as  imparting  to  it  tone,  cadence,  vital 
response  to  the  environment. 

The  preacher  should  and  can  and  must  thus  live  the 
homiletic  life  in  the  twentieth  century.  The  total  rich- 
ness of  the  entire  week  should  be  put  into  that  vivid 
thirty  minutes  in  which  on  Sunday  the  personality  of  the 
preacher  wrestles  in  God's  name  with  the  personalities 
in  the  congregation.  Thus  only  can  he  rein- 
carnate his  ancient  message  in  the  dialect  of  the 
time. 

If,  therefore,  the  theme  and  main  outline  of  the 
sermon  can  be  secured  as  early  as  Tuesday  night,  or 
Wednesday  noon,  so  much  the  better.  The  hardest 
part  of  any  work  is  in  rousing  oneself  to  begin  it. 
Let  that  initial  scrimmage  with  the  devil  of  laziness 
be  over  with,  then,  as  early  as  possible.     Allow  no 


The  Preacher  Preparing  His  Sermon     iij* 

Monday  dawdling.  Go  fishing,  if  you  want  to  be 
apostolic,  but  don't  dawdle,  even  in  fishing. 

Monday  morning  is  a  good  work  time  for  many 
ministers.  The  stimulation  of  the  day  before  keeps 
up  in  the  brain.  Beecher  used  to  say  that  Monday 
was  one  of  his  best  days.  Tuesday  was  the  "  sag  " 
day,  the  off  day  for  him.  Then,  too,  let  the  preacher 
not  be  afraid  to  bring  his  freshest  professional  reading 
during  the  week  into  his  sermon,  not  formally,  of 
course,  in  the  way  of  scholastic  or  literary  parade, 
but  vitally.  Command  four  hours  every  day  for  hard 
work  in  the  study  and  put  two  of  those  upon  the 
sermon  or  sermons.  Bring  into  the  sermon  also  the 
pastoral  impressions  of  the  week, — the  fresh  currents 
from  the  parish  life.  Gentlemen,  never  relinquish 
pastoral  visitation.  You  will  be  tempted  to  do  so, 
and  you  cannot  do  as  much  in  this  field  as  ministers 
could  in  former  times,  but,  to  a  real  extent  you  can 
and  should  maintain  the  practice.  You  must  care 
for  others  all  your  life,  and  care  to  care.  Pastoral 
visitation  keeps  the  minister  human ;  it  puts  a  certain 
humanly  sympathetic  quality  into  his  preaching 
which  is  indispensable.  Only  conduct  such  visitation 
not  carelessly,  but  nobly,  tactfully,  homiletically,  so 
to  speak,  and  make  it  tell,  not  in  the  Avay  of  crude 
and  bald  allusions,  but  by  imparting  subtle,  delicate 
fragrances  and  cadences  to  the  sermon. 

The  deep  reason  for  all  this,  according  to  the  prin- 
ciples we  have  urged,  is  that  the  sermon  is  simply  the 
culmination  of  the  preacher's  entire  ministry.  It  is  the 
pastorate  vocalized.  It  is  the  week-day  manhood  set 
to  Sunday  utterance. 


Il6        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

We  must  keep  ourselves  human,  and  all  the  more 
human  because  we  are  ministers.  You  remember 
what  was  said  of  Phillips  Brooks,  that  "  he  was  a 
saint,  but  was  so  human  that  one  didn't  mind  it." 
Laugh  with  your  people  and  weep  with  them  and  be 
so  much  of  a  man  and  friend  that  both  laughter  and 
weeping  shall  be  real.  God  loves  laughter  if  it  be 
the  laughter  of  love.  There  is  a  fine  and  genial 
humor  which  even  in  the  pulpit  has  its  place.  There 
is  a  gaiety  which  is  born  of  the  Resurrection.  Know 
your  people's  homes  and  speak  to  those  homes  on 
Sunday.  If  some  fond  mother  asks  you  to  come  in 
and  see  her  baby  and  you  think  you  have  no  time  for 
parish  babies  in  the  twentieth  century,  remember 
Jesus  among  the  little  ones  and  go.  And  then  put, 
not  the  incident  surely,  but  some  gentle,  pure  touch, 
caught  from  motherhood  and  from  yonder  Judean  up- 
lands, into  your  sermon. 

Sixth.  Yet,  notwithstanding  these  injunctions  as  to 
bringing  everything  into  the  sermon,  I  urge  in  the 
next  place,  that  we  cultivate  most  diligently  the  art  of 
rej'ectiofi,  which  lies  at  the  bottom  of  the  art  of  per- 
spective in  sermon  writing,  in  our  day  especially.  We 
cannot  incarnate  our  message  for  the  men  of  our  time 
in  any  other  way.  Never  an  age  so  impatient  of  su- 
perfluous luggage  as  ours.  All  noble  art,  indeed,  be- 
gins with  rejection.  Cut  away  all  the  marble  which 
is  not  statue. 

"  The  more  the  marble  wastes 
The  more  the  statue  grows," 

said    Michael  Angelo.      Retain  in  the  sermon  only 


The  Preacher  Preparing  His  Sermon     117 

what  ^'^  has  to  be^^  there, — to  employ  our  rifleshot 
idiom.  Above  all,  do  not  dally  with  rhetorical  con- 
ceits. Strike  once,  and  get  on.  Do  not  hammer 
the  head  off  the  nail.  "  Continued  eloquence 
wearies,"  said  Pascal, — a  maxim  which  you  elo- 
quent young  men  would  do  well  to  remember. 

Says  Southey — "  If  you  would  be  pungent,  be 
brief."  (A  maxim  the  present  lecturer  has  evidently 
forgotten.)  **  It  is  with  Avords  as  with  sunbeams,"  he 
continues,  "the  more  they  are  condensed  the  deeper 
they  burn."  And  that  modern  master  of  style, 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  remarks  : — "  To  add  irrele- 
vant matter  is  not  to  lengthen  but  to  bury.''^  We 
write  and  speak  under  fire.  Let  us  get  out  of  our- 
selves and  back  of  ourselves  and  realize  beforehand 
the  standpoint  of  the  hearer.  Always  ask  yourself 
the  question  which  lies  back  of  the  one  you 
are  asking  the  people, — the  question  which  the 
people  will  probably  be  asking  themselves,  as 
to  what  you  are  saying.  Remember  the  point 
that  commands  the  point  you  are  looking  at. 
Don't  go  on  too  long  in  any  particular  strain 
without  taking  yourself  to  task.  Side  with  the  sup- 
posable  critic  against  yourself.  To  quote  our  Emer- 
son again — "  Ride  on  the  horse  that  is  chasing  you." 

All  this  will  be  found  to  involve  that  subtle  and 
profound  yet  masterful  spirit  of  intellectual  self-denial 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  lies  so  near  the  heart  of 
preaching,  both  as  an  art  and  an  incarnation.  Breth- 
ren, the  cold  truth  is  that  in  our  sermon  writing  we 
put  in  too  much  that  we  might  leave  out.  Thus  we 
lose  both  push  and  perspective.      We  bear  on  too 


ll8        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

hard  all  the  time,  and  thus  lose  the  sense  of  real  ur- 
gency altogether.  You  remember  the  French  mot — 
"  You  can  do  anything  with  a  bayonet  except  sit  on 
it."  When  we  think  we  have  made  a  point  we  sit 
down  on  it.  We  camp  there.  In  this  continuous 
emphasis  we  lose  emphasis.  We  lose  style.  We  lose 
art.  But  we  lose  something  deeper,  namely,  the  tone 
of  the  spiritual  beauty  of  Christ's  Truth. 

Let  us  emulate  the  light,  sure  touch  of  the  Master. 
We  content  ourselves  with  what  is  even  for  us  the 
second  rate  in  our  preaching,  without  asking  whether 
the  sermon  and  the  people  also  cannot  get  on  just  as 
well  without  it.  Write  nothing  except  what  you  can- 
not help  writing.  Ten  minutes'  fine  work  is  better 
alone  than  with  another  ten  minutes'  poor  work  tacked 
on.  Lumber  is  not  life.  We  should  leave  in  the  ser- 
mon nothing  but  what  is  alive,  and  alive  as  Christ 
would  have  it  alive.  People  nowadays  want  your  best, 
then  "done  with  it."  Retain  only  what  is  freshest, 
and  truest  to  yourself,  in  your  sermon,  and  you  will  be 
fresh  and  true  to  your  people,  and  it  is  a  great  com- 
fort to  remember  that  the  congregation  does  not  know 
what  we  leave  out. 

Therefore,  comrades,  let  us  not  reiterate  over  much. 
We  shall  not  avoid  platitude,  but  let  us,  by  the  grace 
of  Heaven,  avoid  vociferation  in  platitude,  and  espe- 
cially avoid  vociferating  the  same  platitude  twice  in 
the  same  sermon.  God  save  us  from  oracular  intensity 
in  commonplaces  ! 

And  when  we  are  through  let  us  stop.  Modern 
people  prefer  that  even  Hamlet's  soliloquy  should  not 
"go   on  forever."      I  knew  a  minister,  of  whom  it 


The  Preacher  Preparing  His  Sermon     119 

was  said  that  he  lacked  only  one  thing,  and  that  was 
"terminal  facilities  !  " 

Here  is  where  we  secretly  must  needs  "  cut  off  the 
right  hand ' '  in  making  sermons.  We  have  to  deny 
ourselves  in  order  to  reembody  the  grace  of  the  Lord. 
Have  we  ever  reflected  how  much  it  may  have  cost 
Jesus  even  to  speak  in  His  simple,  homely  way,  and  in 
no  other  ?  Something  that  we  have  written  may  seem 
to  us  "  fine,"  but  we  know  it  is  out  of  proportion  and 
out  of  place.  Well,  then,  leave  it  out — let  it  go. 
That  sheet  will  light  the  kitchen  fire,  but  it  is  not  the 
best  agent  for  representing  the  sane  symmetry,  the 
natural  grace  of  our  holy  Message.  If  a  man  finally 
saves  for  his  sermon  one-half  of  what  he  writes  for  it, 
he  will  do  well.  I  speak  now  of  the  earlier  years  in 
which  he  is  drilling  and  fitting  himself  as  a  preacher. 

Shall  one  then  polish  for  the  sake  of  polishing? 
God  forbid.  Many  sermons  have  to  be  snap-shots, — 
done  quickly,  with  a  free  hand.  The  preacher  toils 
over  style  with  motive  similar  to  that  with  which  the 
telescope-maker  toils  days  and  days  to  impart  those 
last,  little,  delicate  touches  to  the  great  glass.  Why  ? 
To  make  the  glass  smooth  and  pretty  ?  How  childish  ! 
It  is  to  perfect  the  "  figure  "  of  the  lens,  so  that  the 
lens,  itself  unseen,  shall  accurately  and  with  perfect 
achromatism  reveal  the  infinite  and  immortal  splendors 
in  yonder  distant  skies. 

Seventh. — May  I  venture  then,  in  the  simplest  pos- 
sible closing  word,  to  suggest  six  qualities  as  specially 
apposite  to  the  modern  sermon  ?  For  whatever  other 
qualities  may  be  present,  these  six  are  insisted  on  by 
the  modern  mind  and  need. 


120        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

Three  of  these  are  intellectual  qualities.  One  is 
clearness.  (If  we  talk  about  that  point  we  shall 
make  it  less  clear.)  I  may  say,  however,  that 
as  the  practice  of  our  journals  illustrates,  the  clear- 
ness of  main  paragraph  divisions  suits  the  modern 
habit  of  mind.  Distinct  title,  the  pith  of  the  thing  in 
a  head-line,  separate  paragraphs,  with  not  so  many 
subdivisions  as  in  this  lecture, — this,  together  with 
logical  connection,  straight  and  plain,  and  swift 
movement  right  on,  is  what  the  modern  mind  asks 
for. 

The  second  intellectual  quality  now  called  for  is  in- 
ter estingness,  to  hazard  a  word  employed  by  Herbert 
Spencer.  That  is,  we  must,  on  the  way  up  to  our 
ultimate  end,  speak  of  something  interesting  to  people, 
else  we  cannot  hold  them.  We  must  speak  of  what 
people  are  interested  in,  in  order  to  interest  them  in 
what  they  ought  to  be  interested  in.  This  indeed  was 
the  method  of  Jesus  Himself  in  His  parables,  and  be- 
neath it  beats  the  deep  genius  of  the  Incarnation. 

The  third  intellectual  quality  is  what  we  may  call 
progressiveness.  That  is  to  say,  the  modern  sermon 
must  ''get  on,"  to  use  our  quick  vernacular.  It  must 
have  a  target  and  reach  it.  Modern  men  are  brought 
up  on  newspapers,  and  to  this  extent  we  may  utilize  the 
habit  of  mind  which  a  journalistic  age  produces.  We 
are  then  to  incorporate  in  our  work  these  three  intel- 
lectual values, — clarity,  interest  and  progress. 

Then,  above  these  are  two  moral  qualities  which  are 
indispensable.  They  are  sincerity  and  sympathy. 
The  impression  of  these  is  to  be  made  at  the  start  of 
the  sermon   and  continued   till  the  closing  syllable. 


The  Preacher  Preparing  His  Sermon     121 

Treat  the  congregation  as  a  company  of  friends,  and 
so  disarm  it  of  any  latent  critical  antagonism. 

Then,  still  above  these  qualities  even,  is  the  one 
supreme  and  spiritual  quality  wherein  is  revealed,  as 
we  have  been  saying,  my  fellow-workers,  over  and 
over  again,  the  holy  shrine  of  our  calling.  I  refer  to 
the  indescribable,  vital  impression  of  the  presence  of 
the  Living  God  in  our  preaching,  so  that  the  people, 
though  addressed  in  their  own  dialect  and  through 
our  human  personality,  shall  see  and  feel  not  us,  but 
Him. 

It  is  in  this  spirit  that  we  reach  the  sermon's  close. 
"That  is  not  first  which  is  spiritual,"  says  St.  Paul, 
"  but  that  which  is  natural ;  then  that  which  is  spir- 
itual." It  is  into  the  closing  third  of  the  sermon  that 
the  complete  spiritual  impression  of  the  entire  sermon 
must  be  concentrated.  Here  art  is  at  its  height,  and 
yet  is  most  forgotten.  The  preacher  himself  is  most 
forgotten.     He  incarnates  his  message. 

Not  that  this  closing  third  need  be  continuously  ex- 
alted in  diction.  It  may  be  very  varied  in  manner, 
now  vehement,  now  clothed  with  an  exceeding  great 
gentleness,  or  again  falling  into  quick,  little,  homely 
turns,  or  even  be  humorous,  here  and  there.  All  that 
depends  upon  the  man  and  the  occasion  and  is  as  God 
wills.  But  whatever  the  mental  modulation  may  be, 
this  closing  strain  must  glow  throughout  with  a  living 
and  constant  fire,  A  living  fellowship  pulsates  through 
the  preacher,  between  Him  whom  he  speaks  for  and 
them  whom  he  speaks  to.  Christ  and  the  people  are 
brought  face  to  face. 

As   you   are   aware,  in   many   conventional    text- 


122        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

books  this  particular  mood  and  strain  of  speech 
are  supposed  not  to  be  secured  until  the  moment  of 
final  utterance  in  the  pulpit,  as  if  hardly  possible  to 
be  realized  until  called  forth  by  the  excitement  of  the 
public  occasion. 

My  most  earnest  word  to  you  to-day  is  that  this 
mood  of  feeling  and  address  should  not  be  reserved, 
and  need  not  be  reserved  for  the  public  hour.  It  may 
be  realized  in  the  preacher's  soul  beforehand,  in  the 
privacy  of  his  study,  before  God. 

Is  not  this  the  mystery  and  this  the  blessedness  of 
our  Lord's  living  presence  with  us?  I  see  the 
preacher  turning  even  when  alone  into  that  sacred 
final  strain.  In  preparing  the  sermon  up  to  this 
point,  he  has  endeavored  to  hew  to  the  line.  He  has 
opened  the  Word  of  God.  He  has  filled  clear  para- 
graphs with  his  own  freshest  thought.  Following  a 
plain  track,  he  has  pushed  right  on,  not  dallying 
upon  side  issues,  but  crowding  forward  swiftly  with  an 
orderly  symmetry  of  plan.  He  has  sought  truth  and 
grace.  And  thus,  even  beforehand,  he  comes  to  be- 
hold in  his  mind's  eye  the  people  massed  before  him. 
Then  it  is  that  the  greatness  of  the  coming  moment 
humbles  him.  There  sweeps  into  his  view,  like  some 
great,  gleaming  orb,  the  higher  sense  of  his  calling, — 
the  beauty  of  the  soul,  the  Vision  of  the  Lord,  and  he 
calls  to  himself,  as  if  saying, — "  Have  I  been  preach- 
ing ?  Nay,  I  have  been  but  standing  on  the  threshold 
and  in  the  vestibule  of  my  privilege.  Now  I  will 
preach,  ere  these  my  people  go."  Learning  lays 
aside  its  air  of  superiority,  and  logic  puts  on  the  robe 
of   manly   entreaty.      Everything   in   the   preacher's 


The  Preacher  Preaching  His  Sermon    123 

mind  becomes  alive  and  crowds  up  towards  the  pro- 
duction of  one  final  impression.  Then  ensues,  by  the 
grace  of  God,  even  in  the  quietness  of  solitary  prep- 
aration, that  wonderful  synthesis  between  message, 
speaker  and  hearer,  each  at  its  best,  which  is  the 
unique  glory  of  our  calling.  A  new  spirit  sweeps 
over  the  man,  not  only  as  he  preaches,  but  also  as  he 
prepares  himself  to  preach.  He  becomes  simpler,  his 
words  are  straighter.  He  feels  himself  as  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  King,  and  his  brethren,  the  King's  sons, 
who  may  not  know  their  birthright,  are  also  before 
him.  He  must  tell  them  of  their  heritage ;  he  must, 
if  he  may,  embody  something  of  the  nobleness  of  that 
heritage.  So  he  writes ;  not  in  monotone,  even  of  in- 
tensity, but  with  homely,  living  phrase  perhaps,  or 
with  burst  of  metaphor,  touch  of  pathos,  flash  of 
passion,  or  with  illumined  spiritual  intuition,  or  in  a 
clear  calmness  of  the  rational  soul.  With  any  or  all 
of  these  modulations  of  the  mind,  as  God  has  endowed 
him,  and  with  the  wonderful  chivalry  of  Christ's  fel- 
lowship suffusing  all,  unifying  all,  so  he  will  prepare 
to  speak,  as  well  as  speak.  So  he  will  stand,  when 
the  moment  comes,  a  man  among  his  fellows,  yet 
with  the  entire  manhood  of  him  made  vocal  and  set 
to  the  keynote  of  the  Cross, — the  living  incarnation 
of  Christ's  gospel  in  the  form  best  suited  to  the  time. 

What  is  it  like  ?  It  is  like  a  man's  talk  with  his 
friend  concerning  their  Best  Friend.  What  is  it  like? 
It  is  not  altogether  unlike  Christ's  Calvary  and  Resur- 
rection. 

Blessed  be  God,  it  is  preaching  to  save,  preaching 
that  will  save,  by  Christ's  Power  and  in  Christ's  Name. 


LECTURE  VI 

THE  PREACHER  OF  TO-DAY  BEFORE  HIS 
CONGREGATION 


LECTURE  VI 

THE  PREACHER  OF  TO-DAY  BEFORE  HIS  CON- 
GREGATION 

I  WISH,  by  God's  grace,  to  strike  no  other  note  in 
this  closing  address  of  our  course  than  that  which 
was  struck  at  the  beginning. 

Setting  aside  all  attempt  at  academic  formality, 
avoiding  trespass  upon  the  field  of  homiletics  proper, 
as  taught  in  the  seminary  curriculum,  our  aim  was 
simply  to  present  the  subject  of  preaching  as  it  ap- 
pears from  the  standpoint  of  the  theological  student 
himself  to-day.  And  our  first  assumption,  therefore, 
was  that  most  welcome  one  of  faith  in  the  student 
mind,  and  especially  in  its  undertone,  not  only  as  the 
select  product  of  these  Christian  generations,  but  also 
because  those  who  are  now  students  in  our  seminaries 
are  the  very  men  who  are  already  set  apart  and  called 
of  God  to  the  leadership  of  our  churches  in  the  land 
in  the  coming  generation. 

The  student  himself,  therefore,  we  summoned  to  be 
the  real  lecturer.  His  impression  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment ideal  of  preaching  we  accepted  as  truly  interpre- 
tative, and  we  listened  to  him,  as  in  the  cogent  lan- 
guage of  his  two-score  interrogatories  he  disclosed 
what  he  felt  preaching  should  be, — an  art  which 
led  up  into  an  incarnation,  and  which  in  turn,  ad- 
dressing itself  to  the  present  age,  singled  out  its 
127 


128        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

finest  factors,  in  which  also  the  life  of  Christ  is  mov- 
ing, such  as  the  spirit  of  critical  investigation,  the 
spirit  of  social  fellowship,  the  spirit  of  industrial  enter- 
prise, the  spirit  of  intelligent  philanthropy, — and  by 
combining  such  selected  features  of  the  time,  found  in 
them  a  new  dialect,  a  new  form  of  expression,  in 
which  he,  as  Christ's  minister,  might  again  reproduce, 
without  loss,  the  Gospel  Message. 

In  the  previous  lecture,  in  the  attempt  to  apply  these 
principles  upon  the  direct  field  of  sermon  preparation, 
the  discussion  fell  away  a  little,  I  thought,  from  the  high 
level  of  attention  to  the  principles  themselves.  Possibly 
this  was  unavoidable  in  an  address  devoted  solely  to 
practical  suggestions ;  but  to-night,  let  us  renew  and 
urge  our  loftiest  conception  of  the  holy  calling.  And 
this  the  more  distinctly  because  we  now  draw  to- 
gether all  our  threads  of  reflection  around  the  con- 
sideration of  that  final  moment,  so  brief  yet  so  noble, 
when,  after  due  preparatior,  the  preacher  stands  at 
last  face  to  face  with  his  congregation. 

First.  In  a  simple  and  swift  order  of  thought,  let 
us  ask,  in  the  first  place,  what  is  the  modern  church 
audience,  the  modern  congregation  ? 

It  is  a  formidable  creature,  yet  fascinating.  We 
should  not  be  afraid  of  it,  but  understand  it  and 
respect  it.  Familiarity  with  this  spectacle  recurring 
every  Sunday  has  dulled  our  minds  to  the  sense  of  its 
unique  greatness,  for  here  really  is  the  supreme  arena 
where  the  modern  spirit,  child  of  the  modern  age,  is 
confronted  by  the  Eternal,  as  disclosed  from  ancient 
days  in  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ. 

This  is  surely  not  an   over-strained   fancy.     The 


The  Preacher  Before  His  Congregation  129 

dramatic  grandeur  of  the  scene  we  easily  miss,  no 
doubt,  but  the  preacher  should  feel  it,  and  continue 
to  feel  it.  Nothing  else  in  the  modern  world  exhibits 
the  same  grandeur.  At  no  other  point  of  modern 
life  does  the  spirit  of  the  past  at  its  best  so  accurately 
meet,  so  vitally  wrestle  with  the  spirit  of  the  present. 
It  was  a  famous  saying  of  Tholuck,  which  Dr.  Stalker 
reproduces  in  his  lectures,  that  "a  sermon  ought  to 
have  heaven  for  its  father  and  the  earth  for  its 
mother." 

Even  the  surface  aspect  of  the  typical  modern 
church  congregation  is  remarkable,  although  any  de- 
scription of  it  seems  a  platitude.  It  is  an  eager,  hur- 
ried, critical,  sensitive  mass  of  humanity,  all  in  its 
best  clothes  indeed,  and  presumably  in  its  best  spir- 
itual form  also,  and  yet  appealing  very  deeply  to 
sympathy, — a  thousand  souls  of  every  class,  occu- 
pation, mental  aptitude, — a  throng  heterogeneous 
enough,  yet  strangely  unified  in  the  rushing  torrent 
of  our  modern  life,  as  trees,  dissimilar,  bend  evenly, 
like  brothers,  in  a  gale. 

Naturally  you  will  reply  that  the  Sunday  audience 
does  not  fairly  represent  the  age,  but  is  a  slice  cut 
horizontally  rather  than  vertically  from  it,  and  un- 
doubtedly certain  isolated  phenomena  of  our  time  are 
not  disclosed  within  church  doors.  In  the  church  is 
probably  the  larger  proportion  of  what  is  worthiest 
and  best  in  the  community,  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  dregs  of  society,  the  riff-raff,  the  outlaws,  are  not 
seen  in  the  churches ;  nor  are  certain  of  the  hyper- 
cultivated  and  agnostic  classes  seen  there  ;  nor  is  the 
man-about-town  seen  there. 


130        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

But  when  one  remembers  the  rapid  rush  of  waters 
in  our  human  tides  to-day,  how  the  bottom  of  society 
is  in  two  generations  or  at  most  three,  thrown  to  the 
top,  and  how  large  a  proportion  of  every  community 
at  some  period  of  Ufe  drifts  within  the  sanctuary,  one 
must  conclude  that,  in  a  large  way  of  putting  it,  the 
church  assembly  is  a  very  fair  microcosm  of  the 
modern  world.  Here  are  business  men,  professional 
men;  here  are  families;  the  rich  and  the  poor; 
capital  and  labor  meet.  Take  it  all  in  all,  what  we 
face  in  the  modern  congregation  is  the  age  itself,  both 
devout  and  defiant,  both  believing  and  sceptical,  vol- 
canic in  energy,  perturbed  even  in  repose,  seeking  any 
amusement  as  a  relief  from  strain,  volatile  in  sensa- 
tions, lashed  by  ambitions,  more  conscious  of  the  pres- 
ent than  thoughtful  for  the  future,  passionately  alive, 
though  now  hushed  because  it  is  Sunday,  driven  by 
forces  novel  and  splendid,  through  efforts  it  cannot 
stop  to  measure,  toward  ends  it  will  not  lift  itself 
to  see. 

Not  that  the  congregation  itself  is  conscious  of  all 
this,  or  feels  the  electric  coil  which  it  is  wearing.  On 
the  contrary,  the  average  worshipper,  as  he  enters  the 
church  on  Sunday  morning,  is  perhaps  rather  apathetic. 
The  week's  storm  and  stress  is  succeeded  by  the  Sunday 
calm.  He  is  disposed  to  observation  and  criticism, 
rather  than  to  effort  or  devotion. 

Yet  the  whole  constitutes  a  strangely  pathetic  spec- 
tacle when  one  looks  at  it  narrowly.  Here  are  people 
trying  to  forget.  Here  are  comedies  without  merri- 
ment, and  tragedies  without  dignity.  Here  is  hu- 
manity careless  of  its   glory  and   callous   as  to  its 


The  Preacher  Before  His  Congregation  131 

shame.  Here  are  grand  men  and  grander  women, 
beaten  down  by  the  flail  of  misfortune.  The  people 
are  decorous.  They  bow ;  they  stand ;  they  sing, — 
some  of  them,  if  the  choir  will  give  them  a  chance ; 
they  are  outwardly  attentive.  The  real  mental  mood  is 
somewhat  quiescent,  possibly  even  somnolent.  It  is  a 
day  of  coolness  after  the  hot  week.  Here  and  there  are 
a  few  really  roused,  religious  minds,  but  the  average 
tone  is  conventional,  united  with  a  vague  seriousness. 
It  is  the  vast,  roaring,  week-day  world,  arresting  itself 
for  the  moment,  and  trying,  rather  dimly,  to  remem- 
ber that  it  ought  to  remember  eternity. 

Now,  gentlemen,  I  repeat,  all  this  is  of  course 
platitude.  These  features  lie  plainly  on  the  surface 
and  are  seen  easily.  I  refer  to  these  patent  aspects 
of  the  modern  congregation,  only  for  the  sake  of  say- 
ing that,  important  as  they  are,  they  constitute  by  far 
the  lesser  half  of  that  picture  of  the  real  congregation 
which  the  preacher  must  have  vividly  before  his  mind. 

The  preacher,  it  is  true,  must  mark  these  superficial 
aspects,  and  understand  them  accurately,  else  he  can- 
not deal  with  them ;  but  he  must,  with  far  more  com- 
manding intensity,  realize  before  his  mind's  eye  an 
invisible  audience  which  lies  within  and  beneath  the 
audience  visible. 

For  a  church  audience  is  two  audiences.  One  is 
this  self-conscious,  modern,  visible  congregation. 
But  beneath  this  is  another,  unconscious  of  itself,  or 
only  semi-conscious.  You  have,  of  course,  perceived 
the  thought  before  I  have  expressed  it.  This  invisible 
hearer  within  the  visible  one  is  the  continuing  hu- 
manity in  every  man,  the  true  product  of  the  past. 


132        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

There  is  an  immortal  voyager  whom  somehow  we 
find  already  in  our  little  boats  when  we  take  them.  It 
is  the  undertone  in  every  man  in  which  is  the  residuum 
of  the  ancestral  generations,  the  rich  sub-soil  of  Chris- 
tian civilization. 

Herein  is  the  deep  mystery  of  the  human  soul, 
which  is  "from  of  old,"  Within  yonder  church- 
goer who  seems  so  superficial,  so  careless,  is  a  man 
of  latent  sensibilities,  impulses,  yes,  and  faiths,  too, 
which  however  dull  or  critical  the  man  is  at  the  mo- 
ment, perpetuate  in  him  the  essence  of  ancient  creed 
and  choral,  the  fragrance  of  ancient  sacraments,  the 
reverberation  of  old  heroisms — the  valor  and  pa- 
tience of  Christian  centuries.  There  is  a  unique  and 
solemn  splendor  in  the  fact  that  each  individual  is  a 
kind  of  flask  or  crucible  into  which  all  the  generations 
have  poured  something  of  their  best. 

This  is  not  a  fancy,  though  I  am  putting  it  rather 
fancifully.  It  is  scientific  truth,  certainly.  "Even 
these  highest  of  our  mental  faculties,"  remarks  Haekel, 
"are  just  as  much  subject  to  the  laws  of  heredity  as 
are  their  respective  organs."^  Social  science  recog- 
nizes a  solidarity  of  the  generations.  A  thousand 
noble  choices,  brave  conflicts,  nameless  endurances, 
beat  on  in  this  modern  blood  and  brain.  And  there 
is  a  further  truth  also,  which  science  hesitates  to  state. 
This  invisible  audience  within  the  visible  is  the  hu- 
manity which  Christ  Himself  has  touched  and  is  still 
touching  in  subtlest,  holiest  ways.  So  we  as  Chris- 
tians   must  believe.     This  is  not   "idealizing"   the 

'  "  Riddles  of  the  Universe,"  Ernst  Haekel, 


The  Preacher  Before  His  Congregation  133 

congregation.  It  is  discerning  the  real,  full  truth 
respecting  it. 

Now,  the  commanding  fact  for  the  preacher  to  real- 
ize is  this  invisible  and  spiritual  element  in  his  audi- 
ence. He  must  remember  that  behind  what  his  eye 
sees  is  that  which  his  mind  may  see,  wherein  resides 
a  sure  responsiveness  to  God's  truth.  To  count  upon 
that  latent  responsiveness  is  the  way  to  freedom  and 
to  fearlessness,  to  roused  sympathy,  to  vital  mastery 
in  addressing  the  congregation  visible.  For  with  this 
invisible  man  Christ  Himself  also  is  evermore  plead- 
ing. The  Kingdom  of  Christ  is  already  begun  in 
him.  The  Lord's  Prayer,  the  Triune  Benediction, 
the  deep,  old  creed  phrases,  "I  believe  in  God,  the 
Father  Almighty,  and  in  Jesus  Christ,  his  only  Son, 
our  Lord,"  the  "Gloria,"  the  "Te  Deum,"  the 
"  holy  invocations  "  at  the  Christening,  the  Holy  Com- 
munion, the  bridal,  the  burial, — these  have  recorded 
themselves  in  the  very  substructure  of  the  mind  of  the 
modern  hearer,  in  the  most  intimate  and  instinctive 
turns  of  cerebral  process  and  spiritual  aspiration. 
They  can  be  counted  on  ;  they  can  be  appealed  to ; 
and  in  the  midst  of  them,  as  upon  congenial  soil,  we 
can  again  set  up  the  Cross  of  the  Incarnation, 

Now,  all  this  apprehension  concerning  what  the 
congregation  really  is  and  stands  for,  must  be  enter- 
tained by  the  preacher,  not  as  a  pleasing  fancy,  an 
amiable  dream,  but  it  must  be  realized  with  a  distinct, 
athletic  grasp,  so  that  his  whole  mind  and  manner 
shall  be  flooded  with  it. 

Here  again  opens  before  us  the  unmatched  distinc- 
tion of  our  great  vocation,  that  at  its  summit  of  pro- 


134        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

fessional  duty  it  involves  this  large  sense  of  humanity, 
this  grasp  upon  the  whole  of  the  living,  human  crea- 
ture, in  which  is  an  emancipation  from  the  fetters 
of  fear,  a  vision  of  the  battalions  behind  the  battal- 
ions, a  vital  affiliation  with  the  deeper  and  more  con- 
trolling forces  of  the  soul. 

Second.  What  then,  in  the  second  place,  is  the 
effect  upon  the  preacher  of  so  realizing  humanity 
in  the  congregation  ?  The  answer  has  already  been 
intimated.  The  effect  is  indescribably  inspiring.  It 
is,  if  I  understand  aright,  such  as  to  justify,  to  call  out 
and  to  maintain  that  precise  mood  in  the  man,  that  all- 
round,  roused  energy,  sympathetic  with  the  environ- 
ment, yet  independent  of  it,  and  charged  with  a 
divine  message  to  it,  which  we  have  endeavored  to 
describe  as  the  true  and  effective  mood  for  the 
preacher.  Here  the  light  flashes  back  upon  all  the 
path  of  thought  we  have  travelled  through  these  lec- 
tures. The  moment  of  final  utterance  corresponds 
with  the  path  that  leads  up  to  it. 

The  congregation  realized  in  its  dual  unity  inspires 
the  preacher  to  fulfill  at  once  that  double  function  of 
noble  artist  and  true  prophet,  which  beforehand  he  had 
set  before  himself  as  the  loftiest  ideal  of  preaching. 
Art  is  requisite  in  order  to  deal  with  the  audience  vis- 
ible. No  art  is  too  accomplished  to  be  brought  to 
this  task ;  while  at  the  same  time  the  noble,  sweet, 
chivalrous  manhood,  in  which  Christ  Himself  can  be 
in  some  sense  reincarnate,  appeals  to  and  reaches  the 
audience  invisible. 

Thus  you  discover  that  the  whole  man  in  the 
pew  matches  your  own  finest  thought  of  speech  to 


The  Preacher  Before  His  Congregation  135 

him.  Herein  is  joy  and  power.  The  preacher  is 
made  independent,  and  yet  full  of  that  genial  grace 
which  is  often  the  blossom  of  the  most  rational  and 
devout  earnestness.  If  I  know  that  a  stranger  is 
really  my  brother,  though  he  himself  is  unaware  of 
the  fact,  what  a  peculiar,  unfearing  courtesy  flows  into 
my  manner  towards  him  !  If  in  a  foreign  land  I  meet 
a  man  whom  I  happen  to  know  was  cradled  under  the 
stars  and  stripes,  though  he  is  ignorant  of  it,  what  a 
proud,  glad  comradeship  on  my  part  pervades  our  in- 
terview, though  he  perhaps  persists  in  opposing  me  or 
criticising  me  !  I  am  saying  to  myself  all  the  time — 
'  O  my  dear  fellow,  how  differently  you  will  feel  when 
I  can  get  you  to  know  that  the  same  gun  and  flag 
boomed  and  waved  over  our  babyhood,  and  that  even 
on  a  foreign  shore  we  are  kindred  still.'  Such  a  sen- 
timent completely  emancipates  the  preacher  from  that 
terror  of  the  critical  spirit  in  a  congregation,  which  to 
all  of  us  is  apt  to  be  so  paralyzing. 

It  seems  to  me  that  something  like  this  must  have 
been  in  the  tone  of  Jesus  speaking  to  men,  and  we 
want  to  reproduce  that  same  attitude  and  tone,  so  far 
as  in  our  poor  way  we  can. 

The  most  remarkable  pulpit  genius  of  our  time  once 
said  to  me — "Lyman,  do  you  know  what  my  deepest 
feeling  is  when  I  face  my  great  audience  ?  "  "  No," 
I  said,  "may  I  ask  what  it  is?"  Said  he,  "Com- 
passion. Ah,"  he  continued,  "we  must  be  end- 
lessly, incredibly  compassionate  !  "  He  was  looking 
at  the  invisible  congregation  as  well  as  the  visible. 

Now,  this  roused  mood  from  which  the  preacher 
thus  launches   his  sermon,  tells  not  only  upon  the 


136        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

power  of  the  sermon,  but  upon  the  constant  power  of 
the  minister  in  all  his  work.  What  people  desire  in 
their  minister  is  not  a  Sunday  performer,  but  a  }?ian 
whom  they  can  trust  seven  days  in  the  week, — trust  in 
living  and  trust  in  dying — a  man  whom  they  can  "tie 
up  to,"  as  the  phrase  goes, — a  man  who  incarnates 
his  gospel,  who  is,  in  his  way,  the  thing  he  asks  them 
to  be  in  their  way. 

People  want  reality,  but  not  only  that.  They  want 
a  reality  in  the  preacher  which  shall  elicit  the  nobler 
reality  in  themselves.  And  this  large  way  of  realiz- 
ing what  I  have  called  rather  fantastically  both  the 
visible  and  the  invisible  congregation,  passes  over  into 
that  very  character  in  the  preacher,  out  of  the  pulpit 
as  well  as  in  it,  which  the  people  caji  "  tie  up  to  "  and 
trust. 

I  cannot,  gentlemen,  by  any  words  at  my  command, 
adequately  indicate  my  sense  of  the  indispensable  and 
noble  value  of  this  generic  mood  of  mind  in  our  vo- 
cation. There  is  in  it  a  certain  excellent  charm  and 
power,  an  indefinable  reproduction  of  what  everybody 
at  the  bottom  of  his  soul  believes  in, — the  beautiful 
truth  of  Christ.  It  is  a  mood  of  faith  and  of  joy,  at 
once  athletic  and  winsome,  alive  with  practical  sym- 
pathy and  efficiency,  and  yet  in  its  depths  glowing 
with  the  chivalry,  almost  unworldly,  of  a  man  who 
speaks  for  the  Man  who  spoke  for  God. 

Third.  As  to  utterance  itself :  — May  I  venture  upon 
two  or  three  practical  hints  ?  See,  for  example,  that 
the  right  physical  conditions  exist.  Go  to  bed  early 
Saturday  night.  No  late  dinners  out,  no  fascinating 
and   enchanting   social  calls  Saturday  night,    young 


The  Preacher  Before  His  Congregation  137 

gentlemen  ! — no  exhausting  professional  duty,  either. 
Let  us  take  lessons  from  the  oarsman.  Come  up  to 
Sunday  morning  rested  and  fresh.  Then,  a  cool  bath, 
a  light  breakfast,  a  brisk,  short  walk,  or  ten  minutes 
with  the  dumbbells  and  clubs,  and  you  are  "in  con- 
dition." Do  not  "fuss"  about  the  sermon.  Glance 
at  the  notes,  perhaps;  do  not  "work"  over  them. 
You  will  have  help.  Christ  cares  more  than  you  do 
that  you  should  preach  well.  One  thing  I  might  sug- 
gest :  go  alone  for  a  half  hour  before  preaching  and 
devote  that  half  hour  to  naming  over  your  people,  in 
a  keen,  kind  way,  one  by  one.  That,  and  a  gentle 
uplook  at  the  Christ  for  whom  and  with  whom  you 
are  to  speak — and  you  are  ready.  For  a  man  may, 
with  a  certain  serenity  and  almost  gaiety  of  trust,  ap- 
proach even  the  supreme  effort  of  his  life,  for  the  psy- 
chology which  underlies  this  is  the  law  of  God  in  the 
soul,  the  truth  of  the  indwelling  Spirit,  the  relation  of 
conscious  human  power  to  the  inspirations  from  on 
high. 

Then  go  into  the  pulpit  strung,  but  simple,  realizing 
the  congregation  you  see  and  also  the  congregation 
you  see  that  Christ  sees,  determined  to  do  your  best 
as  a  soul-wrestler,  a  life-saver,  and  ready  also  to  sacri- 
fice in  a  second  your  finest  page,  if  it  gets  in  the  way 
of  the  on-going  march  of  your  people's  responsiveness. 

Then,  as  you  begin  in  the  sermon,  do  not  start  too 
far  above  the  ground.  Even  on  the  ladder  that 
reaches  to  heaven  it  is  not  well  to  stand  half-way  up 
the  ladder  above  your  people's  heads.  In  any  case, 
start  with  them.  Look  at  them.  Make  them  feel 
that  you  care  for  them,  and  for  what  you  are  doing. 


138        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

As  to  gesture,  manner,  and  all  that,  God  forbid  that 
one  should  lay  down  rules.  Art  is  present,  the  finest. 
But  the  time  to  think  about  art  is  not  when  you  are 
preaching.  I  know  only  one  real  rule  for  that  mo- 
ment ; — get  fully  roused  and  into  sympathy  with  the 
congregation  and  then  forget  yourself  and  be  natural. 
It  is  a  mistake  to  be  natural  when  you  are  dull,  because 
the  result  of  that  will  be  simply  a  most  incredible  prosi- 
ness.  The  idea  of  Demosthenes'  famous  definition  of 
oratory  is  fully  roused  manhood  in  the  free  play  of  natural 
action.  Let  the  eloquent  world  speak  through  you. 
Let  the  flash  of  passion  come  like  the  lightning,  when 
it  will.  Let  us  pray  against  monotony.  If  people 
get  sleepy,  tell  them  something  interesting  that  they 
did  not  know.  Do  not  be  afraid  of  humor.  Any- 
thing in  heaven's  name,  so  that  it  really  be  in  heaven's 
name,  is  better  than  listlessness. 

Then,  too,  the  entire  sermon  from  beginning  to  end 
must  glow  with  the  impression  of  fellowship  with  the 
people, — not  a  mawkish  sentimentalism,  but  a  genuine 
and  manly  fellowship.  Nothing  else  is  Christian.  I 
do  not  mean  that  invective,  or  satire,  what  Wendell 
PhiUips  used  to  call  "the  rich  vocabulary  of  Saxon 
scorn,"  has  no  place  in  the  pulpit.  Indignation,  if 
noble,  is  a  part  of  legitimate  pulpit  fire,  but  it  must 
be  reserved  for  rare  occasions  and  for  that  which 
is  clearly  deserving  of  it,  so  that  you  may  carry  your 
congregation  with  you,  even  when  you  denounce  its 
sins  or  satirize  its  follies. 

In  this  kindled  mood,  at  once  humble  and  uplifted, 
which  may  outwardly  be  very  quiet,  there  is  a  kind 
of  wireless  telegraphy,  almost  telepathy,  between  your 


The  Preacher  Before  His  Congregation  139 

congregation  and  yourself,  so  that  as  you  sweep  on 
and  up  and  become  subjectively  intense  and  a 
little  in  danger  of  losing  your  audience,  you  are  called 
back  to  them, — you  introduce  little  turns  and  changes, 
put  in  grappling  irons,  allusions,  illustrations,  almost 
colloquialisms,  perhaps,  not  at  all  premeditated  or 
written  down.  Then,  as  the  sermon  goes  forward 
toward  its  close,  it  becomes  simpler,  swifter,  straighter. 
The  supreme  tones  may  come  in,  tenderness,  pathos, 
spiritual  exaltation.  But  you  will  remember  that  the 
genius  of  the  incarnation  is  not  to  stay  up  on  Mount 
Pisgah,  but  to  carry  the  spirit  of  Mount  Pisgah  down 
to  the  Plains  of  Jericho,  and  the  banks  of  the  Jordan. 

If  the  sermon  is  extemporaneous,  do  not  try  to  say 
what  is  not  in  your  mind,  but  say  what  is  in  your 
mind.  Extemporaneous  preaching  is  not  trying  to 
summon  something  that  you  have  not  been  thinking 
of,  but  it  is  trying  to  tell  something  that  you  have  been 
thinking  of.  Everything  should  be  pervaded  by  the 
air  of  natural  appropriateness. 

Fourth.  From  the  summit  thus  attained,  let  us  look 
back  once  again  upon  that  living  group  of  your  forty- 
four  questions  which  have  followed  us  through  all  our 
discussion,  like  a  band  of  marching  men.  In  a 
formal  way  we  shall,  perhaps,  no  more  articulate 
these  questions  to  each  other ;  for  I  should  have  to 
say  to-night  of  these  lectures  what  my  Spanish  guide 
at  Burgos  said  to  me  when  I  lost  the  train — "When 
is  the  next  one?"  I  asked.  "Signor,"  he  repHed, 
*'  there  is  no  next  one ! ' '  Our  paths  diverge  to-night, 
and  you,  with  your  fresher  morning  strength  will  crowd 
on  ahead  of  us  with  whom  it  is  noontide  or  afternoon. 


140        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

And  yet  we  shall  none  of  us  quite  bid  good-bye  to 
these  questions.  They  sprang  from  the  hearts  of  true 
men  and  they  will  follow  us  through  the  years. 

Have  these  interrogatories  been  answered  ?  In  a 
literal  way,  no.  In  a  mechanical,  technical  way,  no. 
In  that  way  they  cannot  be  answered.  An  alleged 
answer  of  that  sort  would  fail  under  practical  test. 
In  a  more  vital  fashion  some  attempt  has  been  made 
by  way  of  answer.  More  than  half  of  the  questions 
have  been  directly  brought  up  and  quoted  as  we  have 
gone  forward  in  our  discussion ;  and  the  entire  dis- 
cussion from  beginning  to  end  has  been  shaped  with 
reference  to  them,  and  has  sought  to  honor  the  spirit 
which  pervades  them.  But  because  the  questions 
themselves  sprang  from  life,  they  can  be  answered 
only  through  life.  If  Christ's  minister  can  attain — 
and  by  Christ's  grace  he  can  attain — unto  a  certain 
spirit,  a  certain  habitual  attitude  and  action  of  mind, 
such  as  we  have  endeavored  to  describe,  then  I  must 
believe  the  questions  will  very  largely  answer  them- 
selves. 

But  you  will  observe  that  even  then  the  details  of 
the  answers  will  vary  for  different  men. 

Question  number  4,  for  example — "How  much 
'apologetics'  is  needed  in  the  present  pulpit?" 
None,  or  very  little,  in  a  technical  sense.  The  line 
of  debate  has  shifted.  Let  professors,  critical  experts 
fight  the  needed  battles  of  apologetics.  Do  you  pro- 
claim the  gospel  in  such  winsome,  manly  fashion  as 
shall  make  it  seem  to  need  no  defense. 

Or  take  question  number  23 — "What  should  be 
the  relation  of  the  preacher  to  social  problems  and 


The  Preacher  Before  His  Congregation  141 

political  issues?"  One  would  answer  that  question 
very  differently  for  different  men.  Yet  the  under- 
lying principle  is  plain  for  all,  and  the  same  for  all. 
Our  relation  to  these  "burning  questions/'  as  they 
are  called,  should  be  intelligent,  fearless,  practical; 
and  we  should  speak  of  them  sometimes,  but  not  as 
experts.  We  may  and  should  apply  to  them  or  to 
certain  phases  of  them  the  principles  concerning 
which  we  ought  to  be  experts — the  living  and  eternal 
principles  of  Christian  ethics.  But,  brethren,  we  min- 
isters do  not  know  as  much  about  these  matters  of 
current  economics  as  we  think  we  do,  or  as  many 
other  people  do.  Let  us  not  expose  our  sermons  to 
criticism  similar  to  that  of  Macaulay  upon  Atterbury's 
defense  of  the  alleged  "Letters  of  Phalaris,"  that  it 
"was  the  best  book  ever  written  upon  the  wrong  side 
of  a  subject,  of  both  sides  of  which  the  author  was 
profoundly  ignorant." 

I  turn  again  to  your  questions  as  I  close,  with  con- 
tinued wonder  at  their  practical  insight  and  vital 
power. 

Question  11 — "How  can  one  preach  a  system  of 
doctrine?"  By  preaching  Christ  all  up  and  down 
the  scale  of  life,  from  God  to  little  children.  A 
Liying  Christology  is  the  final  result  of  a  Biblical 
theology,  and  is  the  best  form  for  the  popular  state- 
ment of  that  theology.  Shall  the  minister  then  have 
no  dogmatics  in  his  sermon,  no  effort  at  theological 
instruction  ?  I  do  not  say  that.  To  say  it  would  be 
disrespect  to  the  educational  challenge  of  this  age ; 
but  I  say,  present  your  theology  in  living  rather  than 
in  merely  speculative  forms. 


142        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

Question  13 — "How  can  the  effect  of  sermons  be 
made  cumulative  ?  "     By  being  a  growing  man  yourself. 

Question  14 — "Does  modern  preaching  emphasize 
the  human  side  of  Christ  too  much?"  No;  but  it 
does  not  emphasize  the  "Immanuel"  in  Christ 
enough. 

Question  15 — "What  has  become  in  modern 
preaching  of  the  personal  appeal  to  the  uncon- 
verted ?  "  It  is  shifted  back  to  where  Jesus  put  it  in 
His  attitude  towards  parental  influence  and  little 
children. 

Question  19 — "What  will  rally  to  the  church  a 
larger  percentage  of  men  ?  "  A  finer  manhood  in  the 
pulpit. 

Question  25 — "  How  shall  one  get  personal  ex- 
perience into  sermonic  form?"  First,  have  the  ex- 
perience, and  then  if  it  be  real  you  cannot  help  put- 
ting it  into  your  sermon,  but  it  will  be  done  easily, 
naturally  and  without  parade.  Anything  that  is  hard 
to  do  in  that  line  is  not  worth  doing. 

Question  26 — "  How  can  a  man  find  the  common 
ground  between  himself  and  the  congregation?"  By 
finding  the  common  ground  between  his  Master  and 
the  congregation. 

Question  43 — "  Can  a  man  definitely  count  upon 
receiving  special  aid  from  on  high  in  addition  to  the 
natural  powers  of  his  own  mind  ?  "  Yes,  but  only  in 
connection  with  his  own  best  use  of  those  natural 
powers. 

And  then  those  two  great  questions  which  run 
through  half  a  dozen  special  interrogatories  in  the 
series,  to  which  allusion  has  already  been  made  — 


The  Preacher  Before  His  Congregation  143 

"What  truths  are  most  effective  in  preaching?" 
We  have  answered  before,  and  I  would  answer  again, 
— those  in  stating  which  the  best  synthesis  is  possible 
between  Christ,  yourself,  and  your  hearer.  And, 
"  What  resources  and  powers  in  the  mind  are  worth 
the  most  in  preaching?"  I  would  answer,  those 
which  are  the  best  agents  for  producing  and  realizing 
this  synthesis. 

And  now,  gentlemen,  my  simple  but  to  me  delight- 
ful task  is  done.  I  must  not  sin  against  my  own 
canons  of  utterance  and  dally  at  the  close,  nor  pile  up 
words  as  though  some  ambitious  finale  could  make 
good  the  defects  in  what  has  been  said.  I  have  to 
thank  you  for  your  courtesy,  as  I  also  thank  you  more 
than  you  can  know  for  providing  for  me  the  basis 
upon  which  these  addresses  stand. 

I  have  sought  nothing  save  the  most  direct  address 
I  could  command  to  the  members  of  these  classes.  I 
have  not  turned  apologist,  nor  have  I  turned  critic. 
Nor  have  I  sought  to  pass  judgment  upon  living 
men  or  current  methods.  I  have  assumed,  as  such 
lectures  in  this  place  must  assume,  faith  in  the  New 
Testament  and  in  its  master — truth, — the  truth  of 
"Christ  crucified,"  but  risen  and  alive  and  actually 
in  the  world  and  with  His  people. 

From  the  standpoint  of  the  mere  rationalist,  the 
thought  that  pervades  these  lectures,  that  preaching  is 
an  art  which  finally  forgets  itself  as  it  leads  up  to  a 
true  reincarnation  of  the  Gospel  Message  in  the  Power 
of  a  Living  Christ,  is,  of  course,  a  devotee's  dream. 
But  I  am  addressing  not  rationalists,  but  Christian 
students,   and   as  such   you   "  believe  and  are  per- 


144        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

suaded  "  that  the  doctrine  of  "  Christ  with  us,"  is  not 
a  dream. 

At  the  same  time  we  have  tried  to  breathe  the  true 
air  of  the  modern  time  itself,  its  thought,  its  purpose, 
its  free  and  splendid  life.  For,  if  I  do  not  mistake, 
we  have  not  had  in  mind  a  mystical,  esoteric  concep- 
tion of  our  vocation,  but  one  sane  and  Scriptural. 
Nor  is  it  one  which  works  toward  conceit  and  spirit- 
ual pride.  I  commend  to  you  a  view  of  our  calling 
which  invokes  that  large  and  symmetrical  culture 
found  in  the  incessant  mental  interplay  between  the 
rational,  practical,  modern  spirit,  and  the  loftier  in- 
tuitions which  perpetuate  the  faith  of  the  Christian 
ages.  I  congratulate  you  upon  a  calling  in  which 
the  impulse  of  a  noble  art,  seeking  to  express 
truth  in  forms  of  beauty,  is  led  thereby  to  the  moral 
beauty  of  Jesus  Christ  Himself,  and  becomes  a  passion 
to  reproduce  that  beauty,  to  reincarnate  it  in  forms 
suited  to  the  time, — forms  which  may  win  and  save. 
And  thus,  whether  the  older  conceptions  of  Chris- 
tianity, those  represented  by  the  irenic  orthodox  con- 
sensus, contain  the  truer  view  of  it,  or  whether  the 
more  modernly  humanitarian  conceptions  of  Chris- 
ianity  be  the  truer,  in  either  case,  as  I  conceive  it,  the 
essential  argument  of  these  lectures  stands. 

And  for  you,  if  you  will  pardon  a  personal  word  as  I 
leave  you,  it  is  with  a  kind  of  fraternal  solicitude  which 
I  cannot  dwell  upon  without  seeming  weakness,  that  I 
look  along  the  vista  of  the  years  and  see  your  efforts, 
your  disappointments  perhaps,  but  also  your  sure  tri- 
umphs. Sometimes  we  fail.  More  and  more  perhaps 
we  shall  think  we  fail.    But  occasional  failure  to  a  true 


The  Preacher  Before  His  Congregation  145" 

man  is  worth  almost  more  than  success,  because  it 
teaches  him  more.  We  must  learn  to  fling  up  our 
burden  and  let  it  rest  as  on  a  shelf  in  the  Crag  of  God. 

God  with  you,  comrades.  God  give  you  steadiness 
and  swiftness.  Do  not  set  too  much  store  by  any 
man's  ideas,  even  your  owfi.  These  simple  talks  of 
mine,  for  example ;  fling  them  aside  if  they  do  not 
match  with  what  for  you  is  truest.  We  all  have  our 
personal  equation,  and  a  sum  in  substraction  is  neces- 
sary before  we  accept  any  man's  ideas.  Yet  trust 
your  deeper  self.  Dare  to  fling  yourself  out  upon 
that  which  seems  to  you  surely  true.  This  was  the 
way  of  our  Master,  and  He  will  not  condemn  even  His 
mistaken  child,  who  tries  in  sincerity  and  humility  to 
follow  His  method. 

Be  genial  toward  books,  toward  thoughts,  toward 
men.  But  go  up  for  your  orders  only  to  Christ  and 
to  the  higher  terraces  of  your  own  spirit.  Let  us  be 
alive  and  stay  so.  "  Who  grasps  the  moment  as  it 
flies,"  you  remember  Goethe's  line — "  he  is  the  real 
man."  Keep  up  the  splendid  jet  of  roused  and  ready 
power  in  nerve  and  blood  and  brain,  only  mingle 
with  it  the  holy  sacrifice  of  prayer,  and  so  be  God's 
man,  Christ's  man  in  the  midst  of  the  vast  and  tossing 
time.  The  true  preacher  is,  in  all  his  life,  and  in 
every  day  of  it  and  detail  of  it,  dominated  by  this  one 
passion,  namely  to  be  the  kind  of  man  he  asks  others 
to  be, — to  incarnate  his  message. 

We  are  on  the  verge  of  yet  more  signal  exhibitions 
of  the  divine  power.  The  twentieth  century  is  to  be, 
I  believe,  even  more  evidently  than  the  nineteenth, 
Christ's  century.     The  critical  era  is  to  be  succeeded 


146        Preaching  in  the  New  Age 

by  the  constructive.  The  sectarian  is  to  give  way  be- 
fore the  fraternal.  Christian  federation  is  to  be  the 
great  note  of  the  coming  decades,  whose  advancing 
bugles  we  hear  through  the  defiles  of  the  mountains. 
What  a  glorious  reveille  will  be  summoning  you, 
young  men,  when  others  will  be  answering  the  evening 
roll  call ! 

A  profound  change  is  coming  over  the  face  of  the 
waters.  One  meets  it  among  the  ablest  and  most 
earnest  younger  scholars  and  Christian  workers  every- 
where. Its  note  is,  in  a  word — Realize  Christ  ajid 
get  together  in  Him.  The  new  spirit  is  a  faith  that 
works  by  love  and  purifies  the  heart.  The  agony  of 
the  long  fight  against  unbelief  is  lessening  before  the 
profoundly  rising  tide  of  faith  in  the  reality  of  Imman- 
uel  and  His  Kingdom.  I  hold  to  this  nobler  read- 
ing of  the  closing  movement  of  the  old  century.  The 
genius  of  the  Incarnation  includes  not  only  the  Cross 
but  the  Resurrection. 

Let  us  not  fear  to  be  conservative  in  the  sense  of 
conserving  that  which  the  ages  have  found  best  worth 
preserving.  Construction,  in  Christ's  name,  is  the 
true  note.  And  in  the  practical  field  this  reverently 
constructive  temper  is  to  be  matched  by  a  new  sense 
of  human  fellowship  in  the  same  Supreme  Name. 
Divisions  will  remain,  but  they  will  be  divisions  in  the 
same  marching  army.  The  army  is  the  thing.  Sec- 
tarianism will  be  forgotten  folly.  Live  men  are  to 
work  for  live  men  in  God's  strength,  in  Christ's  truth, 
and  hand  in  hand. 

So,  brothers,  fare  you  well.  Preach  in  love. 
Preach  to  save.     Make  the  most  of  yourselves,  for 


The  Preacher  Before  His  Congregation  147 

God  will  do  His  part  towards  making  the  most  of  you. 
The  thing  to  maintain  is  spiritual  chivalry.  No 
theory  of  the  Bible  or  of  doctrine  or  of  church  which 
fails  to  secure  this  will  stand.  Christ  is  the  Master- 
Truth,  the  Master-Power.     In  Him,  fare  you  well. 

We  will  stand  for  the  irenic  and  for  the  fraternal. 
We  will  refuse  to  be  side-tracked,  either  on  the  "  Old 
School"  or  the  "  New  School  "  rails.  God  grant  His 
blessing  upon  any  institution  which  endeavors  to  be  in 
the  best  sense  both  conservative  and  liberal,  which, 
having  guarded  the  precious  chalice  of  the  ancient 
faith  even  to  the  sunset  of  the  old  century,  yet  lifts 
that  very  chalice  into  the  dawn  of  a  new  morning. 
The  old  and  the  new  together  !  The  old  in  the  forms 
of  the  new  !     For  that  let  us  stand. 

And  the  "evening  and  the  morning"  shall  be 
"one  day,"  and  in  that  day  shall  be  builded  on  the 
earth  the  true  City  of  God,  "  coming  down  from  God 
out  of  heaven," — a  city  of  just  thoughts  and  kind 
deeds,  of  allied  communions  and  saved  men,  wherein 
shall  appear  in  ever  brightening  glory  the  tender  and 
majestic  Presence  of  "Him  that  was  slain," — our 
Brother,  walking  with  us  still,  as  in  the  old  Syrian 
time,  yet  our  Master,  our  Redeemer,  "  on  whose 
Head  are  many  crowns,"  "  Whose  Kingdom  shall 
have  no  end." 


"The      Core     of     C  h  r  i  ^i  i  a  n  i  i  y  " 

Uhe  Fact  of  C/jri^t 

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'P.  Carnegie  Simpson,  M,Al, 

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*' SOMETIMES   it  is  so  impressive  that   it    seems 
O    as  if  the  risen  Lord  must  be  present  with  the 
reader." — N.  Y.  Obsei'ver. 

"  It  Hfts  the  reader  high  above  the  tenuous  mists  of 
drifting  doubts. " — IiitcHor. 

"  Packed  with  helpful  and  practical  thought,  wonder- 
fully well  suited  to  the  rtligious  needs  of  our  times.  It 
is  a  message  which  reaches  the  very  core  of  vital 
Christianity  and  is  admirably  adapted  to  confirm  faith. 
The  author  admirably  meets  the  agnostic  and  skeptical 
tendency  of  our  day." — The  Advatice. 

"To  read  Mr.  P.  Carnegie  Simpson's  finely  devel- 
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crispness  and  raciness  of  the  style  are  the  fit  accom- 
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and  thoroughly  digested  thought  .  .  .  The  bare  state- 
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whole  makes  it  apparent  that  we  have  among  us  a 
a  strong  and  independent  thinker,  who  sees  deeply 
and  clearly." — Dr.  Marcus  Dods. 

"Distinguished  both  for  intellectual  clearness  and 
keenness  and  for  moral  courage." — The  Outlook. 

"  He  writes  with  a  force  and  keenness  of  expression 
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read. " — G.  Campbell  JMorgati, 

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